Searching electronic text-oriented databases
- Search Term Diagram
What am I searching anyway? What are the most important concepts of my topic? - Content of a Database
Which information sources or which document types are covered in the database?
Do I use a fulltext or a reference database? - Dialogue with the Database
Dooes there exist different menues for searching? Is it possible to search command-driven? - Database Structure
Which indexes, which special database fields, are searchable in the database? - Search Terms
Which search terms do I get from my search term diagram? Synonyms? Abbrevations? Inflections? Which truncation or wildcard symbols (?$*) are possible (right-hand, left-hand truncation, within a word)?
Problems with umlauts and special characters? Language of the search terms? - Freetext/Keyword Searching or Subject Searching with Controlled Vocabulary?
What is more profitable to my topic? It is better to use free search terms or to use - Search Logic
Which search logic is available for retrieval? Boolean logic (and, or, not) or a best-match-method (relevance ranking)? Is the use of brackets possible? - Context, Neighbourhood, Adjacency, or Proximity Operators, Phrase Search
Which possibilities does the system offer in this field? Can I search for a term directly followed by another term (phrase search) or for two terms who occur in the same database field e.g. in the descriptor field?