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UMSI BSI Final Projects

Suggested resources to help UMSI BSI students gather background information on their clients, their industries and competitors, in order to complete the organizational research memorandum assignment.

Handy tips and tricks to help you search more effectively

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