• Don't use capitals
• Truncate endings (Omit -s, -ed, -ing, -able, -ial, -y/ies endings). Sometimes you'll give the root word and an asterisk to indicate variations (mercur*)
• Use and to connect two terms that must both appear (mercury and fish)
  If you are told that "Boolean and is implied," then just put a space between all the words you want (toxic mercury fish)
• Use or to link two terms, either of which must appear (fish or seafood)
• Use not to exclude any terms you don't want
• Omit other connectors, such as with, of, between
• Use punctuation--parentheses, brackets or quotation marks to join words into a phrase (underwater archaeology){fried green tomatoes} "chrysler building"
• Some searchers allow you to specify a date (1985- 1996 means 1985 through 1996; 1985, 1996 means 1985 and 1996)
• Some search programs use symbols instead of connecting words:

and (+ or &) not (- or !) or (|) near (^)

These symbols are all capitals of the numerals on the top row of the keyboard; place the symbol immediately before the word you are designating, without spaces. However, check the helpline before using these symbols to find out which to use.

For example, if you entered the following as your search mercur* or "mercury poisoning" and fish or seafood not car not automobile not planet

mercur*|(mercury poisoning)+fish|seafood-car-automobile-planet

it would mean that you want those documents discussing any words with the mercur- base--such as mercury, mercuric, mercurial, or the phrase "mercury poisoning" plus the words fish or seafood, but--to eliminate references to Mercury--not any about cars or planets. When you use quotation marks to enclose a phrase, the terms marked this way would have to occur together, in the order specified.

Some programs will allow you to use a long string of phrases linked by punctuation; others may have a limit. You will usually need to do several searches with different keywords, narrowing down your search so that you get more and more specific information.

Some searchers also allow you to specify the proximity of two terms. You might find that it's useful to say that two terms should be mentioned within ten words of each other (such as mercury and fish), or that you don't want two terms within ten words of each other (such as mercury and venus). The searcher instructions will tell you how to write that command.

Using your search string, phrase your search: Beginning with the more specific phrase, list the words you want the computer to search for, according to the guidelines on the program you're using. Keep rephrasing your search until you get a manageable (fifty or less) list of sources.

For example a search for

yielded 48,000+ articles with the search engine InfoSeek and 38,000+ with AltaVista, sorted with the most relevant first (meaning the ones the computer program matched best to the query terms). Don't be put off by those numbers; sometimes it's fastest to read a few of the topmost articles, then narrow the search. For example, one article indicated a study of Finnish men who had suffered from mercury poisoning. Adding Scandinavia or Finn to the search string brought up new articles and then more new search terms. Narrowing the search after reading the first ten articles led to 75--still too many to read all, but there was plenty of information in the top ten.

Next you can change your area of search. There are a number of research services that provide free searches and then charge for copies of the articles. After you complete your search, you can then go to your library for the article. A good one to try is CARL (Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries--at http://uncweb.carl.org). The free search (Uncover) provided a list of a dozen scholarly articles on mercury and fish, many of which could be found in the average college library.