ENC 1101 - Steinhardt (Dale Mabry): Search Tips

This three-minute video shows how to develop good keywords for effective searching in the library catalog and databases. From Norwich Library.

For your convenience, the search box below takes you right into PRIMO without having to navigate back to the HCC Libraries Online link in Canvas.

Let's say our research question is the following:

Based on the method shown in the video, the most important words—our key words or search terms—are college students, social media, and communication.

Some example searches in Primo, the library catalog, are below:

• college students AND social media AND communication
  • "AND" between the search terms tells the search engine to return only results that contain all the words.
• Same search, filtered by Resource Type: Books.
  • Filter your results to make them more precise.
• college students AND social media AND communication AND face-to-face OR in-person 
  • Adding more words makes your search more specific. 
  • You can delete or reset your filters. Here, we are filtering by Publication date and selecting a desired range of years. 
  • "OR" between terms tells the search engine to return results containing either one term or other - which is broader than using "AND."

Depending on your device, filters appear to the left of results, or above them next to the filter icon, which looks like a funnel, like this: .

Access all our how-tos.

Searching individual library databases is similar to searching Primo, the library catalog, as described on this page.

Databases selected especially for you—and help in using them—are linked on the Databases and Websites tab.