Books can be very helpful when you need in-depth information about a topic. Think old, well-established information.
For example, maybe you just need to get a handle on the basics of marketing strategies. Again, use keywords to get a variety of results on that topic. Then, limit the results in your list to Books.
Keywords: social media marketing strategies
Start out using a broad-to-narrow keyword search strategy. Use one or two umbrella keywords, and narrow results with additional qualifiers.
1. marketing strategies
2. add "social media" - notice your results are fewer yet more specific.
3. Limit to Books.
4. Review Table of Contents, Location, Status, and Call Number.
5. Copy the call number of this book and use the Call Number Locator tool to find it.
6. Citation Generator & Permalink
The call number of a library item is similar to a home address.
Copy and paste any call number you find in WorldCat Discovery to see where it lives in the library.
Boolean operators tell the search engine how to connect your keywords together, and significantly affect the search results.
"Quotation marks" - Use quotation marks around a phrase you want kept together.
e.g., "Organizational behavior"
Asterisk* - Use at the end of a word stem to search all possible endings of a word.
e.g., organization* will search organizational, organizations, organization...
e.g., manage* will search management, manager, manage, manages...
AND - Use between keywords or phrases when you want every result to include them.
e.g., "Organizational behavior" AND stress AND manage*
OR - Use between keywords or phrases when you don't care which term is included in a result, so long as at least one of them appears. This is most often used when you string together words of similar meaning to capture more search results, or if you aren't sure which research area to focus on.
e.g., diversity OR inclusion OR discrimination
e.g., stress OR strain OR "emotional distress"
(Parentheses) - To prevent misreading your search, use parentheses to enclose OR strings.
e.g., "management practices" AND (stress OR strain) AND (workplace OR employer OR organization)
NOT - Use to designate specific words or phrases you do NOT want included in your search results. Useful if you need to refine your search after getting too many irrelevant results.
e.g., stress AND (employer OR workplace OR organization) NOT diet