A Guide To...Deaf Studies & Sign Languages

How To Search in CrossSearch and Databases

1. Our databases, as well as CrossSearch, work differently from Google. It might be helpful for you to come up with some keywords to refer to your topic. For example, if you are interested in asking the question, "What does aging look like in high-level politicians?" You might use keywords like this:

• President
• Health
• Senator
• Aging
• Politicians

2. Use the following terms to separate your keywords:

• AND (this term will ask the search engine to look for the terms you have typed together. This will WIDEN your search.)
• NOT (this term will ask the search engine to exclude a certain term or terms. This will NARROW your search.)
• OR (this term will ask the search engine to show you results containing either of the terms you have searched for. This is a great tool to use with synonyms, and will WIDEN your search.)
• * (if you have a word that has a plural ending, you can use this symbol to ask the search engine to include the term you have searched and all its endings. This will WIDEN your search.)
• " " (you can use quotes to search for groups of words or a phrase, instead of keywords by themselves.)
• ( )  (parentheses also act as a grouping tool. Think of them like using the distributive property. You can use them to section off your search, especially if you'd like to exclude terms, or separate them.)

3. Examples:

• president* AND health
• (politicians OR presidents) AND (health OR aging)
• (politicians OR presidents) AND "old age" 
• (politicians OR presidents OR senators) AND "old age" NOT health

Research Pro Tip!: After selecting an article, you may find it useful to look at the abstract (or short, descriptive summary of the article) before reading it in full. An abstract is usually no more than 250 words in length, and can give you a good idea of whether or not a certain piece of literature may be useful to your research.