Search history
This is a quick overview of how to start to build your search strategy. For more information, please take a look at the Medicine Literature Search Tutorial. This includes sections about having a focused research question and searching databases with keywords and subject headings.
Before you start searching, think about keywords for your given subject. You may find it useful to do some preliminary reading in textbooks and encyclopaedias which will help you identify some keywords and key authors.
A good search strategy is to search for keywords separately, plus any of the relevant subject headings recommended by that database, and then combine the results to narrow down your topic.
As you search for different terms, a search history will build above your search results. You can combine searches by ticking the left-hand boxes in the appropriate lines and then clicking the AND or OR buttons.
Combining Results
| Function/Operator | Example |
|---|---|
| AND | heart AND surgery – finds items containing both the words heart and surgery. Use to combine concepts. |
| OR | heart OR cardiac - finds items containing any of the following: the word heart, the word cardiac or both words. Use to combine terms meaning the same concept |
| NOT | (use sparingly) Searches for articles that do not contain the following words e.g. heart NOT surgery |
If you are doing a simple search then you can write the Boolean into the search box. Take care that you have spelled everything correctly. E.g.
For longer searches it is better to use the search history to combine.
