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Research Guides

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

A research guide to help you find relevant books and articles in the field of mechanical and industrial engineering

Tips for Database (including the catalogue) Searching

Boolean Operators
 
AND only finds results that include ALL your search terms.  NARROW.
OR finds results with ANY of your search terms.  BROAD.
 
For example: 
  • automobiles AND design AND construction
  • industrial design AND health aspects
  • human factors OR human engineering

Truncation

Truncation is used to search for alternate word endings in a database. Usually its done by placing an asterisk (*) where you consider the end of the word's root to be. But be careful! If you put the asterisk too soon in the word, you'll get too many irrelevant words in your search results. For example:

auto*  

  • automotive
  • automobile
  • automobiles
  • automatic
  • automatically
  • auto
  • autopilot
  • autobiography
  • autopsy​

automo*

  • ​automotive
  • automobile
  • automobiles

Phrase Searching

Adding quotation marks will help you find phrases in a database.

Searching for "human factors" will find results where 'human' and 'factors' appear right beside each other.

Searching for just human factors will find any result where both of those words appear but not necessarily side by side.

Pro Tip: Use all 3 methods together!

Try this:

automo* engineering AND "human factors"