Mendeley & Endnote
Mendeley Reference Manager helps with organizing and citing resources of various types, such as journal articles and websites. See the Mendeley Reference Manager Help Guides page for help using the program organize references and read and annotate documents. This program is free with storage space up to 2 GB. Mendeley Cite is an add-in that allows you to insert citations and bibliographies into Microsoft Word documents. See the Mendeley Cite Help Guides page for more information.
Endnote is a for-fee program for searching, sharing, and organizing resources to create citations.
Keyword Searching
Use the Search Generator from Northwest Missouri State University to help you create a keyword search.
Using AND/OR/NOT (Boolean Search Operators)
AND |
Use AND to focus search and combine different aspects of your topic. Example: vegetarianism and environment |
OR |
Use OR to expand your search and find synonyms/related terms. Example: global warming or climate change |
NOT |
Use NOT to exclude a word or phrase from your search Example: emissions trading not United States |
Additional Search Tips
|
"Phrase search" - Use quotation marks (" ") to search for a particular phrase. Example: "greenhouse gas emissions" |
|
Truncation * - Use an asterisk to find variations of a word. Put an asterisk following the root of the word to find all variations of that word, including singular and plural. Example: environment* (finds environments, environmental, environmentalist, etc. |
|
(Grouping/Nesting Keywords) - Use parentheses ( ) as a way to group all your search terms together. Example: (climate change or global warming) and population growth |
Search Strategies
| Goal | How To | Example |
| find a phrase | Place quotation marks around a group of words | "secondary education" |
|
broaden a
keyword
search
|
Use an asterisk (*) at theend of a word to search for variations of a word at one time
|
educat* searches for educate, educating, education, etc. |
|
search for
multiple
keywords |
AND searches for items that contain both keywords | educat* AND teach* retrieves documents that have both words |
|
multiple
keywords |
OR searches for items that have at least one of the keywords | educat* OR teach* pulls items with either word |
|
stop a keyword
from showing
up in results
|
NOT excludes items with a specific keyword | educat* NOT secondary means that any items with the word Europe will not show up in the search results |
|
look for words near one another
|
use "near" in between keywords | educat* near secondary |