Skip to Main Content

Research Guides

Chemical Engineering

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

Tips for Database Searching (including the catalogue)

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: 
  • chemical AND reactor
  • chemical AND fuel
  • biomass OR  biowaste

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:

che*  

  • chemistry
  • chemical
  • chemicals
  • cherry
  • check
  • checkers

chem*

  • ​chemistry
  • chemical
  • chemicals

Phrase Searching

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

Searching for "laboratory safety" will find results where 'laboratory' and 'safety' appear right beside each other.

Searching for just laboratory safety 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:

chem* engineering AND "laboratory safety"