Research tips to improve your
searches
Broadening your searches
Learning outcomes
Strategies to broaden your searches using:
•
OR
•
Truncation
•
Variant spellings
•
Historic or geographic terminology
Combining search terms using OR
•
Expands or broadens search results
•
Used for searching similar concepts, synonyms
or variations in spelling:
movies OR films
movies
films
Using OR
Search:
movies or films
Other representations of OR
movies OR film
movies or film
movies / film
Truncation
•
Finds plurals and alternate spellings of root
words:
nurs*
The
*
searches for nurse, nurses, nursing
Variant spellings
•
British vs. American spelling
–
Center or centre
–
behaviour or behavior
–
organization or organisation
Historical or geographical
•
Terminology can differ over time and
geographic location:
Questions/Comments
Reference Librarians
reflib@royalroads.ca
250-391-2575
We look forward to hearing from you!
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