A note about limiting to "Full Text Only" in Databases
When looking for articles, it can be tempting to check the box that says "Full Text Only" like this one-
However, you should know that doing so limits your search to only finding full text within the particular database you are searching.
What's wrong with that?
We subscribe to over 600 databases so, the article you are looking for may well be available in another database we have.
Clicking on the "Find Full Text" button in any article record will automatically link to other databases as well as showing options for interlibrary loan if we don't have the article available elsewhere in our collection.
Introduction
A lot of the content you'll find online will be organized into a type of database. This means you can search them using the same tricks and techniques you use to search library databases.
This page will give pointers on phrase searching and Boolean Operators. Ask a Librarian to get more help with search strategies.
What other search strategies are there?
In addition to "phrase searching," and Boolean operators, you can also try using wildcard searches.
Like truncation, wildcard searches will expand your results. Wildcard searches allow the database to replace the wildcard symbol with any letters that would make up a real word. It's like a shorthand way of typing every possible word that fits the pattern with OR in between. Not only will this save you time, but it might also give you alternative keywords you hadn't even thought of.
Here's a table to illustrate how some of these symbols (including the truncation asterisk) typically work.
| Symbol | What it does | Sample search | Instead of typing |
| * | replaces zero or more letters at the end of a word | comput* | computer OR computing OR computational OR... |
| # | replaces at most one letter | ne#t | net OR neat OR next OR nest OR... |
| ? | replaces only one letter | b?t | bat OR bet OR bit OR bot OR but OR... |
REMEMBER: Some databases may use these symbols differently or may use different symbols, so check the database's help section if you're having problems with wildcards.