Information Skills Flashcards
What is subject heading searching?
Using the thesaurus of biomedical terms which are arranged in an hiearchal structure of categories, for a focused search of articles specifically related to the term. In Medline, subject heading searches are MeSH and appear as MH on a search.
They should be combined with a keyword term search for each stage of the PICO.
What is a keyword term search?
Less precise method compared to Subject Heading searches to identify relevant articles containing the term in the title, author, abstract or subject using alternative words for terms and wildcard symbols like truncation. It is typically used alongside Subject Heading searches, using the Bolean Operator “OR” for each part of the PICO.
First step of Keyword search is unticking Map-Term to Subject Heading.
What is the Scope note?
Provides the definition of the subject heading.
What cannot be included as part of a Subject Heading search?
Truncation or wild card symbols. Searches in MeSH must occur one term at a time.
What is ‘Exploding’ a subject heading?
Option that ensures the database finds articles that includes all the sub terms of the subheadings, to ensure all relevant articles are identified.
What is ‘Major Concept’ on a subject heading?
Database will only identify articles where the subject heading is the main content of the entire article.
What is the Boolean Operator?
Defines the logical relationships between the terms in your search to connect them and focus the search, which is “OR”, “AND” or “NOT”.
What is the Boolean Operator?
Defines the logical relationships between the terms in your search to connect them and focus the search, which is “OR”, “AND” or “NOT”.
What are the wildcard symbols?
Used in keyword searching to identify as many relevant articles related to the term as a stand in for a character.
What does * mean in a keyword search?
It is a truncation wildcard symbol that represents a limitless number of characters.
E.g Baking would be Bak* to include baker, baking, baked
What does ? mean in a keyword search?
Used in a keyword search to represent a single alphabet letter in a specific position.
E.g B?ll would identify terms that include bell, ball or bull.
What does # mean in a keyword search?
Represents a single numerical character in a specific position.
E.g 1#5 can mean 105, 155, 195
What does ( ) mean in a keyword search?
The database must search for articles including any of the letters inside the brackets.
E.g B (ae) ll is going to search for Ball and Bell.
What does ! Mean in a keyword search?
Excludes any characters inside the bracket.
E.g B (!a) ll will exclude any search with ball inside.
What does — mean in a keyword search?
Include articles with the term that has a range of any of the characters, ideally should be arranged in ascending order.
E.g B (a-d) ll will search for Ball, Bbll, Bcll and Bdll.
