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AFRS 366: Colonialism in Africa

Advanced Searching

Your searchable topics are informed by your assignment prompt. Consider the following example using the Advanced search function in OneSearch:

Figure 1:

OneSearch advanced search using subject terms "China", Colonialism", and "Africa"

Figure 1 illustrates multiple techniques to increase the relevance of your search results by using:

  • subject searching to ensure your results are reasonably ABOUT your search terms.
  • the boolean operator "AND" to pull results that contain all subject terms from your search. Your result list will provide you with the intersection of your chosen subjects or keywords.

Figure 2:

Catalog record of article displaying subjects picked up by the advanced subject search.

Figure 2 illustrates a catalog record produced by the subject search using the search terms "China", "colonialism" and "Africa".  Note how these terms appear in the 'subject' heading assigned to a resource, assuring that the resource is sufficiently about the search terms used in the search. 

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