#SearchSmart! Information Literacy Tutorial

1. Use Phrase Searches " "

Use double quotes to enclose a phrase in order to search for string of words together (instead of a single word)

i.e. “information communication technologies”, "higher education"

2. Use Boolean Operators  AND, OR, NOT

Use the AND operator to join each of your different concepts together

i.e. “information communication technologies” AND “higher education” AND “South Africa”

Use the OR operator to connect similar words within a concept - expand your results

i.e. (“higher education” OR “tertiary education” OR university)

Use the NOT operator to limit your results

i.e. “higher education” NOT “basic education”

3. Use Truncation * and/or Wildcard ? # symbols

Use the asterisk * truncation symbol to search for both singular and plural forms of a word

i.e. communication* (will search for) communication, communications

and universit* (will search for) university, universities

4. Use Proximity Searching ^n

Use the caret symbol followed by a number ^n to ensure that search terms appear within a certain number of words of the other search

i.e. "South Africa"^5

5. Bring them all together!

Now, try and put all of it all together into one search string.