Russian, East European and Central Asian Resources at UW-Madison : Database Search Strategies

This tutorial shows you how to search for articles in article databases.  It shows you how to use AND to combine terms, limit to articles from scholarly journals or by date of publication, use subject headings and abstract to find keywords, find full text of articles, and use tools to generate or export citations. 

• Use AND to combine different words to find all those words, in any order.  
  • Balzac AND Goriot 
• Use OR to combine similar words or synonyms 
  • money OR wealth
• Use quotation marks ( " ") to search words as a phrase
  • "Old Goriot"
• Use an asterisk ( * ) to find varied endings of words and singular and plural forms.
  • father* to find father, fathers, or fatherhood
• Look at Subjects to find additional keywords and use them to find relevant and specific results.