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857-701-1380
or via text at 857-877-2255
library1@rcc.mass.edu
1234 Columbus Avenue
Building 3, Room 211
Boston, MA 02120
Search below to find articles, books, and streaming videos from the library.
Quotation Marks
Quotation marks are used around phrases. By using quotations marks, you are telling the computer to only bring back pages with the terms you typed in the exact order you typed them.
Example: “health care reform” instead of health AND care AND reform
Truncation
Truncation means to chop off. When you truncate you chop off the end of the word, so the computer can search for multiple endings.
For example, your research question includes the keyword education. You can truncate education, so that the computer will find all of the word ending variations.
Educat* will find:
Education
Educate
Educated
Educating
Be careful where you place the truncation symbol. Educate* will not find education or educating, although it will find educate and educated.
Truncation will not find synonyms (i.e. scien* will not find the words botany, biology, or astronomy), although it may bring up articles on those topics IF they include the words science, scientific, or scientist.
Minus Symbol (-)
Sometimes when searching the web, the computer displays lots of results that are not on your topic.
For example, you want to find information on laser surgery, but most of the search results are pulling up LASIK. To remove these hits, search for: “laser surgery” -LASIK
Be specific
Library catalogs and article databases have a limited amount of information. The web is virtually limitless. To pull up the most relevant information when searching the web, you need to use lots of terms related to your research question.
