Proximity Searching:
- Proximity Searching is anadvanced search technique that can help make your search more specific and efficientin library databases.
- Proximity searching is used to narrow searches by finding words that are next to, near, or within a specified distance from each other.This is useful when you are looking for concepts that might be expressed by multiple different phrases.
For example, if you did a regular phrase search for “curriculum theories,” you would not retrieve documents mentioning theoriesofcurriculum, theoriesinvolvingcurriculum, theoriesaboutcurriculum, or other similar phrases. But, if you were to do a proximity search, and look for the termcurriculumappearing within a number of certain words (or less) of the termtheories, you would be able to retrieve many phrases formed with those words.
Proximity Operators:
- Proximity searches use operators to designate how closely, and in what order, you want the search terms to appear.Typically the proximity operators are composed of a letter (N or W) or word (NEAR) and a number (to specify the number of words appearing between your search terms).
- Proximity operators are often used whenBoolean operatorsearches are notnarrowing down a search enough.
For example,when a search forChicago AND bluesresults in toomany articles that weren’t really about blues music in Chicago; they just mentioned both words somewhere in full text. Usingproximity operators will narrow down the search further and increase the likelihood that blues and Chicago are linked.
Important Note:
- Different databases use different proximity operators.
- Not all of our library databases support proximity searching, or, if they do, they may require you to format your search differently.
