Library Out Loud

Do you know how to search for two related keywords at the same time?…

Just use OR between the keywords, and make sure it’s in capitals.

So for example you could look for: teenagers OR adolescents OR youth

This works in Discover, the Library Catalogue, many other article databases, and yes, Google too.

It hasn’t always been essential to use capitals in many databases, but it’s becoming more and more common, so it’s best to get used to doing it. If you don’t use capitals, many search tools will try to look for ‘or’ as one of your keywords, which makes a bit of a mess of your search. If in doubt, look at the Help screen for the tool you’re in.

Find out more about how you can use OR searching with either single or multiple search boxes, in our short demonstration on Creating a Search Strategy.