English, Literature & Writing (UNH Durham)

The main Library Search Box on the home page searches many of our several hundred databases plus physical holdings from the UNH library.

Suggestions when using this include:

• Use Advanced Search for more options
• Put "compound terms" in quotation marks to keep the concepts together (e.g. "climate change" but not needed for pollution).
• Filter using navigation on left-hand side of results list
• Be careful limiting by geographical area since many databases don't have a Geography field to search

Use the ready-made searches in the blue boxes below the single search box to weed out articles, search outside of the library, and more.

Use the Advanced Search option whenever available (this is often the default). Advance search screens will alert you to ways that you can refine your search using fields specific to that database.

When typing in your search terms, consider using

• truncation to search different endings for the same stem; the asterisk is the symbol used by most databases
  • Example: pharmac* returns results with the words: pharmacy, pharmacies, pharmacists, pharmaceutical
• quotation marks to indicate a phrase or compound term
  • Example: "camino de santiago"
• Boolean operators (connectors)
  • and - tells the system to include all the search words (this creates fewer results)
  • or - tells the system to include any one of the words in the search results; use for synonyms or alternative words for the concept you want (this creates more results)

Under Settings:

• check that Library Links shows that "University of New Hampshire - Full Text @ UNH" is selected
• you can set the Bibliography Manager to show links to export citations to BibTeX (Zotero)

Google.com

Specify the domain to target the sources of your results.

• Site:.org - retrieves pages from organization sites. This would eliminate most company and commercial sites but will still include Wikipedia.org results
• Site:.edu - retrieves pages from education-related and university sites
• Site:.gov - retrieves pages from government sites (US federal, state, some municipalities)

Also consider exploring or contacting local libraries and/or historical societies, special collections and archives at colleges & universities in the area, and organizations or associations related to your topic.