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Social Work (UMB): Search Strategies

This guide supports the courses taught at the Universities at Shady Grove in the Masters of Social Work (MSW) Program of the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Searching Tips

Boolean Operators: AND, OR, and NOT 

Truncation: cut off the end of a word and use an asterisk “*”
 to get more results:

Ex: educat*= educate, education, educator, educating, etc...

Use Synonyms and related words to search


Keyword Searching Tips

  1. Search by words and phrases instead of sentences
  2. Breakdown by concepts
  3. Look at the subject headings/index terms for synonyms and alternate terms

Selecting Keywords

Boolean Operators

Phrase Searching & Nesting

Truncation