Proximity searching
IFN001: Advanced Information Research Skills (AIRS) is a mandatory coursework requirement for Higher Degree Research (HDR) students enrolled at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) or Master of Philosophy (MPhil).
Transcript: There may be times when using the Boolean operator AND does not produce as effective results as you would like. Although using AND may pick up all the terms used in the search, these can occur anywhere across the retrieved documents and does not guarantee a close relationship between terms as proximity searching will. Proximity simply means one thing is close to another. Finding your keywords located in the same sentence or paragraph is likely to make the results more relevant. This is when you can use proximity operators to help. Use a proximity operator between keywords to retrieve records where the words are found close to each other. You can control how far apart they are by setting the number of words. We will consider two operators NEAR and WITHIN. NEAR is often represented by N. For example, N5 finds the words if they are a maximum of five words apart from each other, regardless of the order in which they appear. WITHIN is often represented by W. W8 finds the words if there within 8 words of one another in the order in which you entered them. Sometimes the NEAR and WITHIN operators will vary from database to database. Check the help screen to see what to use.
For more information:
• AIRS full "Tips and Tricks" series here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd-Kh...
• Watch all AIRS learning module videos here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lQpe...
• Visit the AIRS website - https://airs.library.qut.edu.au/
• Follow QUT Libraries on Twitter: / qutlibrary
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