Guidelines for searching

• Searching
  • Choosing a database
  • Search profile
  • Truncated search
  • Boolean searching
  • Word and phrase searching
  • Index search/proximity search/WordList
  • Characters
  • Help
  • Source - Journal/Book
• How to search the various databases
• Contents in various databases

Searching

Choosing a database
You must choose a relevant database and define the topic (key words and synonyms) before starting the search. To assist you in choosing database, we have prepared a table describing the contents of some major databases.

Search profil
Define the topic (key words and synonyms) before starting the search. Students, ask your advisor for help. More information on how to define a search profile.

Truncated search
Truncation means cutting off the end of a word when creating a search expression. The hit list will include all possible endings to the word, in addition to the root word itself. The truncation expression varies, depending on the database you are using, e.g. ? (BIBSYS), * (AGRIS) or + (OCLC). In general, only right-truncation is possible, i.e. end variations of words.
Example:
librar? (BIBSYS) will result in hits for all references containing "library", "libraries", "librarian", etc.

Boolean searching
The Boolean (or: "logical") operators AND, OR, and NOT help expand or narrow the scope of your search.
Example:
horses AND cattle: returns all documents with both words in them.
horses OR cattle: returns all documents containing either "horses" or "cattle" or both.
horses AND cattle NOT pigs: returns all documents with both "horses" and "cattle" in them, but omitting those documents containing "pigs".

Word and phrase searching
Depending on whether or not you know the exact title of the document you are looking for, you can search for either single (key) words, or a complete expression (phrase).

Index search/proximity search/WordList
An index search will give you an alphabetic list of search words available in one particular field (e.g. author, title).

Characters
It usually doesn’t matter if you use UPPER or lower case characters. The Norwegian characters Æ, Ø and Å cannot be used in international databases.
Example:
Æ = ae,a,e
Ø= o,oe
Å= a, aa

Help
Every database has a number of help files and guidelines. Please refer to these, they often include helpful tips to make your searching more efficient.

Source - Journal/Book
Once you have found literature in either CAB, AGRIS or OCLC, you have to use BIBSYS to locate which Norwegian library may have it available. The ISI database has a direct link to BIBSYS (BibsysX). The title field in BIBSYS does NOT contain titles of articles, but rather of their source. In other words, you have to search for the journal or book in which the article was published.

How to search the various databases

Find links to all databases on our web pages: databases listed alfabetically or by subject.

Note: Norwegian "og", "eller", "ikke" corresponds to (Engl.) "and", "or", "not".

Contents in various databases

* OCLC includes the databases WorldCat, Article1st, UnionList, AGRICOLA, EconLit, ERIC, GPO, MEDLINE, PaperFirst, ProceedingsFirst: