Four GALILEO Search Tips

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In this video, I will show you four tips on how to get better search results in Galileo.

Tip number one. Include only strong words in your search terms. Rather than searching a long phrase like "should children of immigrants have legal rights," try reducing it to "rights of immigrant children." Or you may have better results by entering "and" between your strong words. So in this case you would have "rights and immigrant children." Also think of synonyms for alternate words you can use.

Tip number two. When you find  an article relevant to your search, look at the subject search terms in the article's record for alternate words you can use in your search. You can also click on one of these terms and be taken to a list of results based on the specific subject.

Tip number three. The Galileo Discover search and many individual databases include limiters to narrow and refine your search results set. For example, you can limit the date, if you're researching a current topic and only want recently published articles, or use the subject limiter to refine your results to a more specific subset of your topic.

Tip number four. In most databases a keyword search includes the title, author, subjects, and abstract, but not the full text of the article. If no results or only a few results are returned, use the "all text" field and the advanced search to include the full text of the articles in your search.

I hope this video was helpful to you. If you have any questions for us, please contact us using the "contact us" form on the Galileo home page.

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Link to video (opens in a new window): Four Galileo Search Tips video