‘OR’ searching in Discover

October 7, 2013

If you use OR searching in Discover (or other EBSCOhost databases) to look for alternative terms, there are a couple of things you should know…

The OR should always be in capital letters, or your search results will be skewed. For example:

Don’t do this! The search below asks Discover to look for results that have all of these words: or teen* adolescen* youth*

discoversearch1

Do it like this! The search below asks Discover to look for results that have at least one of these words: teen* adolescen* youth*

discoversearch2

 

The other thing to be aware of at the moment is that OR searches are not working quite as they should in the single search box. Discover is not automatically assuming that there is an AND between the other search words, when you include an OR search in brackets. This problem is being worked on, but in the meantime there are a couple of solutions:

If you use the single search box, insert AND (must be in capitals) between your other search words. For example:

discoversearch3

Or use the Advanced Search with multiple search boxes. For example:

discoversearch4

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