When conducting a search, you may get too few hits and have to broaden your topic.
To broaden your search, try the following:
| Replace a specific term with a more general term | Replace sister or brother with sibling |
| Substitute a synonym for one of your keywords | Replace home study with home schooling or student-paced education |
| Combine terms with or to get results with either or both terms | Search home study or home schooling to get results that include both home study and home schooling |
| Add a wildcard character, usually an asterisk (*) or question mark (?) (Check the search tips to find out which wildcard character is in use.) | Search home school* or home school? to retrieve results for home school, home schooling, and home-schooler |
Most often, you’ll get too many hits and need to narrow your search. To narrow a search, try the following:
| Add a specific term | Search not just home schooling but home schooling statistics |
| Combine search terms into phrases or word strings | SearchHome schooling in California |
In many cases, using phrases or word strings will limit your results to items that include all the words you have specified. In a few cases, you may need to insert quotation marks around the terms or insert the word and between them to create a search phrase or word string. Check the search tips for the database, catalog, or search engine you are using.