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Assignment | Argument with Research (P. Khalaf): Advanced Search Tips

ENGL 1302 | Prof. Paula Khalaf (Spring 2024)

Making the Most of Advanced Search

These databases will generally start you out with a basic one-field search, which is okay... but we can do better with the Advanced Search.

Screenshot of a JSTOR basic search for "Civil War" which would bring back 793K results

When you're constructing your search, think about how to break your topic down into little bite-sized chunks. You can't just write "Civil War Sherman burns Atlanta" -- well, you could... but it's more effective to break it down, as shown below:

Screenshot of advanced search using multiple fields: Civil War AND United States AND Sherman AND Atlanta

As you add on additional fields for search terms, they'll be joined together by AND by default. This "AND" is the most powerful limiter: the articles you get back have to have term 1 AND term 2 AND term 3 to end up in your results.

If you notice you're getting a lot of articles about Gettysburg instead of Atlanta, you can add another field and switch the AND to a NOT (NOT Gettysburg) to help get rid of those results.

 

This is where your background research really pays off!

All those terms and phrases and ideas you developed before? They all can feed the Advanced Search machine. Be sure to consider synonyms for your different search terms so you can swap them out to play with your search. (E.g. "college" but also "university" or "higher education")

Plus, because you did that background research, you're starting off with a clearer idea of what information you need to find. This means you'll know what you need to put in those search fields to narrow it down from the massive and generic "Civil War" to "Civil War AND United States AND Sherman AND Atlanta."

Google Better

You can streamline the quality of your Google searches by focusing on government (.gov), education (.edu), and organization (.org) domains in your results.

  • .gov is the most strict to register -- non-government entities can't get it!
  • .edu is mostly universities, but you'll sometimes come across some K-12 entities with this domain. Make sure you're not reading a student paper as a source, though!
  • .org is the least reliable of these three, since it doesn't take much to form an organization.

 

Google has some advanced search commands to make this quicker. Just add site:___ to your search! E.g. site:nasa.gov or even just site:.edu. Try it below!

Google Web Search