SciTech: How to structure a search

Build out your synonym lists to get as much from each search block.

More search blocks will narrow your combined number of search results.

In many databases, AND has higher priority than OR, meaning if you need to find information about the tails and teeth of both cats and dogs, you need parentheses (tail OR teeth) AND (dogs OR cats), otherwise you would just get tails OR dogs teeth OR cats.

Many databases offer truncation, wildcards, proximity operators, and the option to search specific fields (title, abstract, keywords is a good option rather than full text e.g.). Those databases that do usually have a search help function in the advanced search, where you can see which are available to your search. These are good options for narrowing your search results.