Audio Transcript Auto-generated
- 00:01 - 00:05
Hello everyone and welcome to my key concept presentation
- 00:05 - 00:08
for info to 44 online searching.
- 00:09 - 00:14
The purpose of this presentation is to introduce the concept of truncation
- 00:14 - 00:19
and wild cards and explain the benefits of these two search concepts.
- 00:19 - 00:23
I am hoping by the end of the presentation you will have a better
- 00:23 - 00:29
understanding of how these simple concepts can make or break your search results.
- 00:31 - 00:31
Thank you.
- 00:32 - 00:36
Truncation and wildcard searching basically used
- 00:36 - 00:38
symbols to replace letters in words.
- 00:39 - 00:43
This tells the database to search variations of your search term
- 00:43 - 00:48
allowing you to retrieve more results than when searching with just one word.
- 00:49 - 00:52
You would typically use truncation when searching
- 00:52 - 00:55
for words that might have multiple endings.
- 00:55 - 00:57
Like for example the words son,
- 00:58 - 01:01
this strategy can retrieve words such as Sunny
- 01:01 - 01:03
sunshine or Sons.
- 01:04 - 01:05
Wild cards
- 01:05 - 01:10
may be used with words that are spelled differently but could mean the same thing
- 01:10 - 01:11
in other languages.
- 01:12 - 01:14
For example, the word analyze.
- 01:15 - 01:17
Let's examine truncation a little bit more
- 01:18 - 01:19
to truncate something
- 01:19 - 01:21
basically means to cut it.
- 01:22 - 01:25
This search concept just happens to be one of
- 01:25 - 01:29
the most useful and used features of databases.
- 01:29 - 01:32
Using truncation will broaden your search while
- 01:32 - 01:35
allowing searchers to find variations of words
- 01:36 - 01:38
like plural and word suffixes.
- 01:39 - 01:43
One of the most common symbols associated with this term
- 01:43 - 01:44
is the district
- 01:45 - 01:46
in general.
- 01:46 - 01:49
Most of the libraries databases use the asterisk.
- 01:49 - 01:54
However, the exclamation point is used in lexisnexis.
- 01:54 - 02:00
Of course this method can also backfire and could produce too many results
- 02:00 - 02:04
truncating after too few letters can retrieve terms
- 02:04 - 02:06
that are not relevant to your search.
- 02:06 - 02:08
So you must be very careful.
- 02:09 - 02:12
Wild cards work a bit differently,
- 02:12 - 02:16
but basically are out to achieve a similar goal of like truncation.
- 02:17 - 02:20
This search method is used to replace letters in
- 02:20 - 02:24
words where there are unknown or multiple possible characters.
- 02:24 - 02:28
The letters are often replaced by either a question mark or pound sign
- 02:29 - 02:31
in order to find
- 02:31 - 02:35
out which to use, you must check that specific database first,
- 02:35 - 02:38
so it doesn't mess with your search results
- 02:38 - 02:40
jumping back to truncation.
- 02:41 - 02:45
If you add an asterisk to the end of a wild card search term,
- 02:45 - 02:48
it will retrieve the plural of those words as well.
- 02:49 - 02:54
This search concept definitely requires lots of practice because as I mentioned,
- 02:54 - 02:58
it has the ability to backfire if not used properly.
- 02:59 - 03:03
My advice would be to start slow and see your result with and
- 03:03 - 03:06
without these search concepts to better understand
- 03:06 - 03:08
how it is affecting your search.
- 03:08 - 03:08
Strings.
- 03:10 - 03:13
Searching is definitely a talent and may require some trial
- 03:13 - 03:19
nearer before feeling completely comfortable using any search concept.
- 03:19 - 03:22
Thanks for listening to my key concept
- 03:22 - 03:26
presentation and please remember to check the
- 03:26 - 03:31
pro sheets of each database to ensure you are using the correct codes.
- 03:31 - 03:36
I hope you gained some useful and valuable information.
- 03:36 - 03:37
Thank you