Nest Searching
Nest searching allows you to combine keyword and phrase searching, Boolean operators, and truncation and wildcards into powerful searches! If you are conducting research on the use of college libraries by students and you have several keywords and phrases to string together in a search, nesting will let you accomplish this! When researching any topic, there are a number of ways that an idea or keyword can be represented. In our example, college libraries could also appear in a search as academic library, academic libraries, university library, or university libraries.
To search across multiple keywords and phrases, use the nesting search approach by grouping like ideas with parentheses ( ). Using parentheses tells the database to look for the terms in the parentheses first and then expand the search out from there. Nesting also lets you use Boolean operators to connect like terms.
Example: (academic library OR academic libraries OR university library OR university libraries) AND (college students OR university students OR undergraduates)