Information studies & Linguistics and communication & Saami

Help in information searching

The topic being searched is divided into sections which are described with search terms. Common search terms are the central concepts of the problem, synonyms and foreign language equivalents for the concepts, and related, broader and narrower terms.

1. Truncation of the search terms allows the programme to include conjugated forms of the word. Truncation symbol in foreign databases and in Oula-Finna is asterisk (*).
2. The phrases (adjacent words) are normally written using quotation marks.
3. Boolean operator OR looks for the references which contain either search term A or B or both of them. The operator OR is used, for example, when connecting synonyms and combining broader and narrower terms.
4. Boolean operator AND looks for the references which contain both search terms A and B. The AND operator is used when, for example, you want to combine two subject areas.
   
   ("non-verbal communication" OR gesture*)
   AND
   (emotion* OR feeling*)

Useful tools to get familiar with the concepts and terminology of the research field are Wikipedia articles, journal articles, reference works, handbooks, dictionaries, thesauruses etc.