Examples of search strategies for literary topics
Phrase searching
Put quotation marks around words that you want to search as a phrase.
“Harlem Renaissance” “Yellow Wallpaper” “Route 66”
Truncation
Shorten terms and add an asterisk * to search for all forms of the root word.
symbol* = symbol + symbols + symbolism
Boolean Operators
Use Boolean operators to refine your search results.
AND - Use AND to find articles with all of your search terms.
Atwood AND poetry
“Harlem Renaissance” AND “women writers”
Hughes AND "Johannesburg Mines"
“Road Not Taken” AND symbolism
OR - Use OR to find articles that have either search term in them.
irony OR sarcasm OR satire
"Le Guin" OR LeGuin
Chekov OR Chekhov
Put parentheses () around your ORs if other Boolean operators are present.
poetry AND (irony OR sarcasm OR satire)
NOT - Use NOT to eliminate terms you do not want in your search results.
irony AND Hardy NOT "Three Strangers"
