Be sure that the database you're searching covers your topic, fits any chronological limits you may have, and indexes the types of materials that you need. Every database comes with some sort of online help for the novice searcher. Read screens carefully for buttons, bars, or banners that offer some sort of link to this assistance. This information should help you to easily answer the rest of the questions listed here. Others use a numbers sign.
Some databases also allow for a special kind of truncation, called internal truncation .
Boolean operators are used to link search terms, combining them in different ways. For example, some databases might use but not or and not instead of not . Look at the Boolean operators section of any online help to see if there are any variants offered that might help you perform a more efficient search. Proximity connectors are a little like Boolean operators in that they link search terms. Connectors, however, are used to dictate how close the two search terms must be to each other within a record.