MATH 217: History of Mathematics

In order to find articles in a database, you must effectively communicate your information need to the database.

General Guidelines:

1. Keep your first search simple
2. Avoid using long phrases, sentences, or sentence fragments
3. Use quotes (" ") to distinguish between phrases and keywords
4. Use the search operators to form your search
5. Observe the subject headings used by the database to group together articles, etc. on a given topic

Instead of simply typing in masses of keywords into a database search screen, take a moment to examine the following search operators that are common to many business databases.  Remember, you will need to formulate a search statement rather than simply typing a question or extensive phrase.

AND    

 Mandates the inclusion of the word or phrases somewhere in the record.

                        Example:   renaissance and algorithms

OR      

Used to account for variety in expressing an idea, and may be used for allowing provision for multiple acceptable terms. Records retrieved will contain any one of the words or phrases in the set, not necessarily all.

                        Example:   (euclid or diophantus) and (algebra or "number theory")

NOT    

 Excludes records containing a specified word or phrase. When using “not,” one must put “not” at the end of one’s search statement.

                        Example:          mathematics and medieval and china not japan

Truncation      

Utilized to account for varieties of a desired word.  The database will find records containing words beginning with the word chunk you provide.

For example, a search for math* would retrieve records containing any of the following:

Mathematics, mathematical, mathematically, mathematician, etc.

Keep in mind that the truncation symbol changes from database to database.  For example, while EBSCO databases use the asterisk (*), LexisNexis uses the exclamation point (!).  Consult the respective databases' HELP screens to learn the truncation symbol for the given database.

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