Search strategy tips for finding scholarly articles about occupations in the library databases

In many cases, you can change the focus of each search field in a database to specify that your search term(s) must appear in the article title, or abstract, or subject. Experiment with the available search fields in each database to see how your results change.



Here's some example search strategies that use types of search fields that appear in most databases:

Start with the following strategy that searches a database for your selected occupation as the subject of an article. Remember to select the field type indicated below in bold.

SU Subject Terms: enter your selected occupation*

Then add any one of these strategies into another available search field using the terms career, occupation, profession, or job. Remember to select the field type in the database indicated below in bold and separate your search terms with the word OR.

TI Title: career* OR occupation* OR profession* OR job*
SU Subject Terms: career* OR occupation* OR profession* OR job*
AB Abstract or Author-Supplied Abstract: career* OR occupation* OR profession* OR job*

I included the * asterisk symbol at the end of the search terms in my examples to search for the singular or plural forms of each word. This method also searches for expanded forms of each word, i.e.: occupational, professional or professionals.