Locating popular culture materials can be tricky. The following search terms may be good starting places for popular culture research, when you are searching Mirlyn or in another database.
Search terms for general materials related to popular culture:
Searching for specific items:
Make sure to search by the item name, in quotation marks, as well as the applicable year. As an example let's search Mirlyn for the 1974 film adaptation of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
Search term: Great Gatsby
Results: a long list of books, movies and critical analysis that feature The Great Gatsby as a keyword or title word.
Search term: "Great Gatsby" + 1974
Results: The correct movie is returned as the first search result.
Search for items using a combination of known information such as the title, preferably in quotes, as well as the date or author.
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