Most search engines will have a specific syntax and it's a good practice to look it up when you are a new user.
One commonality between many research databases is that you can be precise with your keywords and phrases. You do this by using Boolean operators to join the keywords and phrases in your search: AND, OR and NOT.
- Education AND "liberal arts": this will search for all instances of the two keywords appearing at least once
- Education OR "liberal arts": this will search for either of the two keywords appearing at least once
- Education NOT "liberal arts": this will exclude all items that say "liberal arts"
NOT can be a tricky operator and you may inadvertently exclude results that are relevant by not considering how certain words might be used within contact. Use NOT sparingly.
Many databases also allow you to join words together using parentheses (). Here is an example of what that might look like in practice.
- (cat OR feline) AND tuxedo
