Be sure to use Caps for AND, OR, NOT when searching.
AND - searches for books and articles containing both terms. Example: Women AND "Civil Rights"
OR - searches for one of the words. Example: Virginia OR Georgia
NOT - exclude a term. Example: NOT California
Parenthetical notes () - excellent for OR or NOT searches. Like a math equation, the database will do this part first.
Example: ("higher education" OR "university education") AND women = search for women AND "higher education" and women AND "university Education."
Quotation Marks ""- Links words together in the search. Works best for phrases or proper names.
Example: "Civil Rights Movement"
Example: "African American Women"
Asterisk * - Allows you to search several word endings at once, without using OR repeatedly.
Example: wom* will bring up results for woman, women, womens, womanhood
Warning: You may get unexpected results. Wom* will also bring up wombats, wommeras, and about 100 other words in English alone.