Now you understand some common techniques to make your search more effective, let's consider how you apply them to the resources.
Here are some tips:
- Search techniques are often helpful for carrying out more complex or detailed searches on bibliographic databases.
- Other resources, such as clinical decision support tools, are more suited to a much simpler search with one or two key words.
- Some resources are designed to be browsed rather than searched - e.g. BrowZine.
- The more complex your search, the more likely it is you'll need to use searching techniques.
- Refer to the individual pages for searching health evidence.
Most importantly,
- not all resources support the use of techniques - this might affect the accuracy of your results, or lead to an error message;
- always make sure you know where to find the help pages or search rules for the resource you are using. If you have questions you can always contact the library.
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