AND, OR, NOT

Connecting words (Boolean operators) for combining terms in a search

* ? # !

Common symbols for truncating (chopping off) words to search singulars and plurals and variant endings. Example: wom?n finds women, woman, or womyn in many, but not all, indexes.

RECORD

The description of a document (article, book, etc.) found in a database search.

FIELDS

The various parts of a record, such as author, title, abstract, publication year. These are often searchable separately for greater precision.

FIELD LABELS

Symbols that are used to indicate various fields of a record. Common symbols include JN for journal, PT for publication type, PY for publication year. Also know as "tags."

LIMITS

Field labels that can be used in a search to limit results by elements such as publication year, type, or language. Examples: la=english or english in la

DESCRIPTORS

The subject indexing terms used to describe the contents of a document. Common field labels for descriptors are DE or SU. Used to obtain more precise search results. There is often a built-in thesaurus of descriptors from which you can insert terms into your search query.

NESTING

(drug* or narcotic*) and (Medellin or Colombia)