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RESEARCH GUIDES

Gemstone

This page serves as a source for documentation and information for Gemstone Librarians and students.

Asterisk (Truncation)

Use an asterisk ( * ) to tell the system to search all available suffixes of a word.

  • Example: Searching librar* searches libraries, library, librarian, etc.
  • Keep in mind this will not work for every word, but can be a way to save time in your searches.

Quotation Marks

  • If you are searching for a specific book or article (a known item), use quotation marks around the name of the item:
    • Example: "Poverty, By America"
  • If you are searching for a compound phrase, quotation marks will also search for your phrase together instead of as individual words.
    • Example: "breast cancer screening" or "solar energy"

Subject Terms

Subject terms are specialized vocabulary used to describe topics. Subject terms are generated by the database to describe different subjects and give you more relevant results.

Subject terms are also called "controlled vocabularies" because they are pre-made by the database you are searching in.

Keywords

Keywords are words you can use to search in databases. Using keywords will look for that word in the title and body of the article and may not deliver the most relevant sources, like a Subject search would.

Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT)

Boolean Operators act as connectors so you can search multiple concepts at once. Each Boolean Operator has a specific function.

AND

Using AND will narrow your search and combine concepts. AND means both concepts must appear in your search results.

  • Example: students AND "test anxiety"

OR 

Using OR will broaden your search, since it means either concept must appear in your results. OR is helpful when your topic is known by different names.

  • Example: "higher education" OR college OR university

NOT

Using NOT will narrow your search and remove concepts. NOT is helpful when your topic is means different things.

  • Example: Mercury NOT planet

Database Filters

Database filters are helpful to narrow down the results in your database search. Database filters vary by database, but typically you should expect filters for date, publication type, peer-review, journal name, etc.