Dialog: Improving Searches: Broadening & Narrowing

Broadening Your Search

• Do when your search resulted in Zero or very few relevant records.
• Techniques to broaden the search include:
  • Select different or add additional databases to search.
  • Use the or operator with:
    • Additional alternative or synonymous terms.
    • With more fields or when searching all of each record in the database.
  • Set the limiting numbers associated with proximity operators (w, n) to higher numbers.
  • Eliminate or minimize and or not operators that may be limiting your search too much.

Narrowing Your Search

• Do when your search resulted in too many records, many of which are irrelevant.
• Techniques to narrow the search include:
  • Select different or reduce the number of databases to search.
  • Select more specific search terms.
  • Combine appropriate terms by using and or not operators.
  • Set the limiting numbers associated with proximity operators (w, n) to lower (closer) numbers.
    • Eliminate or operators that may be overly expanding the results of your search.

To: LT65 INDEX	To: GREENSHEET	To:	To: TOP OF PAGE:
So many urls. So little time. TM
(c) 1996-2003 - optimized for Netscape & 800x600 display