Quotation Marks
If the keyword you've identified is made up of more than one word, it may be helpful to enclose the phrase within quotation marks. This will ensure that the words within the phrase appear in sequence in the results you retrieve.
Boolean Operators
If you are combining keywords that represent multiple different concepts, you will need to employ Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT).
feminist AND photography - will only retrieve results in which "feminist" and "photography" appear
feminist OR photography - will retrieve results in which "feminist" appear, as well as results in which "photography" appear (including results in which "feminist" AND "photography" appear
feminist NOT photography - will retrieve results in which "feminist" appear, but excludes results that include the term "photography"
Wildcards/Truncation
It may be helpful to truncate your keywords, meaning using an asterisk to represent part of a word. For example, if you would like to expand your search, you could use "photograph*" to represent: photograph(s); photography; photographer(s); etc.
This can be helpful in some cases, but in some cases, depending on the word and the search tool, it can retrieve a lot of superfluous records. For example, in an interdisciplinary database, using the root "photo*" would retrieve an incredibly large number of results because the prefix "photo" appears in many more words than just those related to photography.
