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	Refine Your Search
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·	How Results Are Found and Displayed
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Refine Your Search

• Too many hits?
• Not enough hits?

Too many hits?

• Don't use the General Search box. Use the Subject Search box instead. Remember, the database has more than 180,000 documents to search.
• Limit the search by date. The database covers literature dating back to the early 1970s.
• Use more specific words. Words such as "crime" or "police" will retrieve too much.
• Choose a Boolean search instead of a concept search, and use the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT.

Not enough hits?

• Use fewer terms. Too many terms connected with AND can restrict a search too much.
• Change one of the terms to a broader one. For example, replace "juvenile gangs" with "gangs."
• Combine synonyms or related words with OR when using a Boolean search. For example:
  • "death penalty" or "capital punishment"
  • ("police" or "law enforcement") and " California "
  • ("narcotics" or "drugs") and ("adolescents" or "juveniles")
• Include the plural forms of words by typing an asterisk after the search term(s). For example, "prison*" will find "prison," "prisons," "prisoners," and other words with the root word "prison".
• Look for misspellings in the search terms.

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Last updated on: 4/3/2007