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MAKE YOUR SEARCH DATABASE-FRIENDLY: Databases respond better to single words or short phrases than to long, natural language queries. Connect words and phrases with AND or OR.
LESS GOOD: does vitamin d deficiency cause depression
BETTER: vitamin D AND deficiency AND depression
USE THE DATABASE'S WORDS: Databases tend to have official subject headings that they use for different topics. Try to find out which subject headings apply to your search. (Look at the database record of a good article to see which subject headings were used, or search the database's thesaurus directly.)
WORDS SEARCHER MIGHT USE: B vitamins; colon cancer
SUBJECT HEADINGS DATABASE USES: vitamin B complex; colorectal neoplasms
WHEN POSSIBLE, USE THE DATABASE'S SEARCH OPTIONS: Sometimes it makes more sense to use advanced search options or limiters than words to narrow your search.
Instead of typing vitamin D and depression review articles, type vitamin D and depression and limit your search to review articles using the database's advanced search options.
Limiters are also available for things like language, date of publication, article or publication type, type of subject (human/animal), gender, age, etc.
WILDCARD SEARCHING: If your search could include a number of related words (e.g. nutrition, nutritional, nutritive, etc.), most databases let you use a wildcard to search for all of them at once.
Type as much of the word as all of its forms have in common, then type the wildcard character (usually an asterisk).
EXAMPLE: a search for nutriti* will bring up articles that include the words nutrition, nutritional, nutritive...)