Databases and Web search engines (covered further in Chapter 4) may include features that allow you to focus or refine your search. If you understand the concepts and terminology of these features you can search any database, or the World Wide Web, more efficiently and effectively.

The next several pages of this chapter will explain the following common search features.

 
• Basic and advanced searching
• Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
• Phrase searching
• Limiting searches (by date, language, format,etc.)
• Truncation
• Help