TECHNIQUES FOR SEARCHING COMPUTER DATABASES

TECHNIQUES FOR SEARCHING COMPUTER DATABASES

Overview of terminology:

Database--A computer file made up of a number of records. OBIS is a database.
Record--Entries, or items, that make up a database. In OBIS, most records represent books.
Field--The individual parts, or data elements, of a record; for example, the author field, the title field, the journal name field, the date field, the language field, or the abstract field.
Function Keys/Hot Keys/Links-shortcut keys or letters or highlighted terms that represent a command you wish to execute in the database

Basic Techniques*

Concept	Definition	Example
Controlled Vocabulary Searching (authority control)	searching for descriptors (e.g. subject headings, authors' names) an indexer has selected from a standardized list	adolescents (used for teenagers) hooks, bell (used for Watkins, Gloria Jean)
Thesaurus	a standardized list of subject headings used for a database	Library of Congress Subject Headings (used for OBIS)
Keyword Searching	searching for words that have been automatically indexed by a computer	Book title: The Jazz Exiles: American Musicians Abroad (all words except "the " are indexed)
Stopwords	words that are not automatically indexed	and, the , as, but, that, it, by, for, of
Boolean Logic	the use of Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) for more precise searching of databases	[see examples below]
AND	search for records that include all of the terms (narrows the search)	archaeology and bible
OR	search for records that include any of the terms (broadens the search)	homosexual or gay or lesbian germany or france or switzerland
NOT	delete records that include this term (narrows the search)	advertising not television
Truncation	substituting "wild card" characters for one or more letters	feminis* [finds feminist, feminists, feminism] wom*n [finds woman, women]
Limiting	restricting search results to a subset of the database	English language, published after 1992, located in the Art Library, scores format, research done on humans
Help	information about the database and the search software	online general or context-sensitive help screens database or search software guides and manuals

* all techniques not available in all databases. Techniques may be implemented in different ways depending on the search software being used.

Advanced Techniques*

Concept	Definition	Example
Nesting	clustering groups of terms that belong together within parentheses in order to ensure correct execution of the search statement	(spouse* or wife or wives) and (abus* or batter* or violence)
Proximity	requiring words to appear within a certain distance of each other	religion with social class asian* near2 american*
Adjacency	requiring words to appear immediately adjacent to each other	new adj mexico
Order	requiring one words to appear in a particular order	cable pre television
Frequency	requiring words to occur a specified number of times	affirmative action at least 10
Sort	re-ordering search results in a particular arrangement	alphabetical sort by journal name chronological sort by year of publication
Save/Mark/Tag	indicate selected records within a larger set for future action	mark most relevant records to be printed later
Output options	different ways search results can be saved for future use	print on paper download to disk send to an email address
Natural language searching	searching for information by keying in a query in natural language	What has been the impact of NAFTA on wages in Mexico and the United States?

* all techniques not available in all databases. Techniques may be implemented in different ways depending on the search software being used.

CHC 1/97

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