Knight-Wallace Fellows

Subject Specialists are the librarians in the U-M Library system who select collection materials for a particular subject area. They are generally the most qualified librarian to ask for help on a specialized area of research and study. Please feel free to contact them directly with any questions. 

http://www.lib.umich.edu/subject-specialists

SEARCH TIPS for catalog search, library databases, and the web (applicable to many search engines, including Google and Google Scholar)

PHRASE SEARCHING

Put phrases in quotation marks:  "hurricane katrina"    "social media"   "campaign finance reform"

TRUNCATION

Use an asterisk * for truncation (to find any ending of a term):  communicat* will find communication, communicates, communicating, communicator, etc.

MANY KEYWORDS

Many different keywords may describe the same or related concepts

(movies, film, cinema, motion pictures)

(refugees, migrants, asylum seekers)

BOOLEAN "OR"

To search for ANY  one of a group of terms, use OR and parentheses:  (movies OR film OR cinema)

BOOLEAN "AND"

To search for ALL terms, use AND:  violence AND movies AND children

COMBINE the above strategies 

violence AND (movies OR film OR cinema OR "motion pictures") AND (children OR kids OR adolescents)

SEARCHING IS ITERATIVE 

To be effective and thorough, go back and try searching multiple times with many different keywords