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Research Guides

Mineral Engineering

A research guide to help you find relevant books and articles in the field of mineral and mining 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: 
  • mining AND environmental aspects
  • gold mines  AND mining
  • surface mining OR strip mining

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:

geo*  

  • geology
  • geologist
  • geological
  • geographic
  • george
  • geography
  • geocentric
  • geoarchaeology

geol*

  • ​geology
  • geologist
  • geological

Phrase Searching

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

Searching for "surface mining" will find results where 'surface' and 'mining' appear right beside each other.

Searching for just surface mining 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:

geol* engineering AND "surface mining"