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Understanding Your Search Results

Quantity of Results
   Too Many?
   Too Few?

Quality of Results

Navigating the Library

I need it, but the library doesn't have it.

Too many titles in your result list? Try some of these tips:

Replace a general search term with a more specific one:
general term: prisoners
specific term: women prisoners

Add more search terms to your search query:
women and prisons becomes women and prisons and New Mexico

Browse through the titles and subjects of your current search results and look for other useful search terms.

Put phrases in quotes. Some databases automatically read adjacent words as phrases but others do not. Most databases read words within quotes as a phrase.

For example, if you are looking for articles on New Mexico, using the search query "new mexico" will find retrieve the articles on New Mexico but not irrelevant articles on Mexico.

Use limit/refine/modify search options if the database has them. For example, can you limit by date, language or format (such as a book, journal article, etc).

Add a proximity operator to specify how closely two terms appear.

For example the search query: dependents w/3 prisoners tells the computer to retrieve items where the word 'dependents' appears within 3 words of the word 'prisoners'.

Different databases have different ways of writing a proximity search. Check the help screen for your database.

Use the Boolean operator "not" to eliminate an unwanted term. If you were looking for articles about only female prisoners, this search query might solve the problem: prisoners not male