Searching: Skills and Techniques
The purpose of this guide is to:
- Help you learn some useful search techniques
- Improve your search results
- Confidently undertake research using the Library Search or databases
Search techniques
Where should I search?
Library Search
Library Search is accessible by using the search box on the library website. It searches across a variety of different sources, including some of our key databases, ebooks and physical books, and open access (free) articles.
Library website (basic search) Advanced search
The basic library search can perform surprisingly complex searches, if you're confident in using Boolean operators and other techniques to manipulate the search!
Databases for your subject
Databases
Databases are repositories of published material, usually (but not always) based around a broad subject area. Some databases contain full-text articles, others just contain the abstract (a record or overview) of the research, which you could search and try to obtain from elsewhere.
Some databases allow to search by subject headings.