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Provides you with step by step help to start your assessments and develop your research skills during your first year at UniSA and UniSA College.

Search tips

Connecting keywords

To form a search strategy you need to connect your keywords together using AND and OR. These are known as connectors or boolean operators.

Find out more, select the below.

AND

AND connects different keywords together so you can find references containing all these keywords. The more keywords you connect using AND the more focused your search will become.

working hours AND family

OR

OR connects synonyms or alternative keywords together so each reference contains one or more of these words:

family OR families OR parent OR parenting

Example search

Single search box:

("working hours" OR "hours of work") AND (family OR parents)

More help

Now read the below short guide and try the interactive activity.

Search tool functions

Key function you can use in most search tools including the Library collection search and many databases:

Key function How to use it
Quotations marks "..." Use to search for words as an exact phrases:"working hours"
Truncation Use the * to find plurals and other word forms: parent* finds parents, parenting etc.
Brackets ()

Use to group similar keywords together if using a single search box:

("work hours" OR "job hours") AND (family OR parent)

Limits or filters

Use to focus your search results further. Common limits in the Library collection search include:

  • Show only - Peer reviewed journals
  • Publication date range
Advanced search Most search tools has an advanced or multi-field search option. These can be useful to help you structure your search.

More help

Watch this video

Please note: the menu to refine your search results is now located on the right and called Refine my search.

Test your knowledge

Work through this interactive tutorial (5 mins) to confirm what you have learnt.