1. When researching a topic it is best to select just the main keywords to search, not a whole sentences.
Not: What impacts does a natural disaster have on the incidence and types of crime?
Main keywords: disaster, crime
2. Boolean Operators are three words (AND, OR, NOT) that combine keywords. AND will narrow a search, OR will broaden a search, and NOT will narrow a search by excluding a keyword. Rather than search a sentence or phrase, it is good to connect main keywords together with AND:
AND: disaster and crime
OR: "death penalty" or "capital punishment"
NOT: "hurricane response" NOT "Red Cross"
3. Use quotation marks when you want to search words together as a phrase: "criminal justice"
4. Truncation to save time. Use an asterisk * to take the place of letters in a word so that other forms of the word can be searched at the same time: crim* polic*
Sample search expressions:
disaster* and crim* Searches disaster and disasters, crime, crimes, criminal, criminals
"three strikes" and sentenc* Searches "three strikes" as a phrase and searches sentence, sentences, sentencing