Waltham Group

There are a number of search strategies you can use in Library OneSearch and our library databases to help improve your search results.

Phrase Searching

Put quotation marks (" ") around search terms to search for them as an exact phrase. Example: "higher education."

Boolean Logic (AND/OR/NOT)

• Use AND between keywords to narrow your search results. Example: charter schools AND Massachusetts.
• Use OR between keywords to broaden your results. Example: "individualized education program" OR IEP.
• Use NOT to filter out results that contain terms you're not interested in.

Truncation

Use an asterisk (*) if you'd like to find multiple endings of a word root. Example: educat* will find educate, educator, education, educating, etc.

Author Name

Authors may publish their works under different names or variations of the same name over the course of their lifetimes. Try searching for different combinations of an author's name or try using some of the advanced search features in our databases to search by an author's institutional affiliation (e.g., Brandeis) or their ORCID ID, if they have one.

Proximity Searching

This feature is useful if you want to specify your search terms' proximity to each other. The formatting for this feature differs between databases, so check the database's help page if you're not sure what format to use. Here's the formatting you would use in some of our library's databases to search for the word feminist within 4 words of the word pedagogy:

• ERIC (ProQuest): feminist N/4 pedagogy
• APA PsycINFO: Feminist N4 pedagogy will find the words if they're a maximum of four words apart from each other, regardless of their order. Feminist W4 pedagogy will find the words if they're within four words from each other, and in the exact order that you entered them.
• Scopus: feminist W/4 pedagogy

L  Education(General)
LA  History of education
LC  Special aspects of education
LD  Individual Institutions - United States
LE  Individual Institutions - America (except U.S.)
LF  Individual Institutions - Europe
LG  Individual Institutions - Asia, Africa, Indian Ocean Islands, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands
LH  College and school magazines & papers
LJ  Student fraternities - United States
LT  Textbooks 

Our picture book collection and the majority of our education titles are located on Goldfarb Level 1. Some subject-specific titles (e.g., math education or art education) are shelved in separate areas of the library.

Note: Oversize materials (+ in front of the call number) are shelved separately from the regular sized materials.

Wayfinding Resources