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Advanced literature searching

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Advanced literature searching/h1>

How does the main LibrarySearch search screen really work? 

If you are new to using LibrarySearch, complete this module:

You will find that the method you use to input your search terms will change your results, for example:

  • Input: corporate social responsibility in international business
    LibrarySearch looks for anything containing all the keywords you’ve included.  In effect, it looks for anything containing corporate and social and responsibility and in and international and business.  Although some results may be useful, you’ll find far too many – over 14,000 – and in the articles you find the search terms might not even appear on the same page. 
  • Input: corporate social responsibility and international business
    Changing in to and will still leave you with too many results
  • Input: “corporate social responsibility” “international business”
    LibrarySearch looks for anything containing the exact phrase corporate social responsibility that also contains the exact phrase international business.  In other words, it assumes there’s an AND in between the two phrases. You should get you far fewer results and they are more likely to be relevant because they contain both exact phrases.  Adding more search terms – such as sustainability – will help to narrow down your results further.

In the meantime, don’t forget you can also use the Advanced Search option.  There, you can specify you are only interested in those results where certain terms – such as “international business”appearin the title.  You can enter a phrase such as corporate social responsibility into the ‘This exact phrase’ box.  (As they’re in that box, you don’t need the double quotation marks.)  You can include other words you want by adding them in the ‘All these words’ box.

Screenshot of an advanced search