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ATM 281 Socio-cultural Aspects of Apparel

This guide is specifically for ATM 281 on Clothing in relation to individual and group behavior patterns; personal and social meanings attributed to dress; and cultural patterns of technology, aesthetics, rituals, morality and symbolism.

Google vs OneSearch

OneSearch

 

When you go to Google looking for answers, you usually enter your whole question into the search bar. While searching for, "How does fashion promote inequality?" will retrieve many relevant results, typing the same thing into OneSearch will not be as successful.

 

This is because OneSearch is searching the full text to find those words in that sequence. It is searching for the words "how" and "does" especially in titles. It is also trying to find "?" which is used by OneSearch as a Wildcard. Because of this, it is best to only type keywords into the search bar.

 

Since we have more than one keyword, fashion and inequality, click advanced search to expand the search box to view multiple boxes or use Boolean terms.

 

You can also change the search options under "Tweek my results" to select only peer-review journals and CWU Online Resources as well as the date the articles were published.

I like to think of this part as if I'm online shopping. Take a look at Amazon. It also has search features you can adjust to better find a product. Instead of shopping for shoes in OneSearch, I'm shopping for information.

 

 

Now that I've refined my search, I now only have peer-reviewed journal articles that were written in the last 2 years that are about fashion and inequality. (Click on the screenshot below to see all my search results).

 

Search Operators

Search operators help clarify, narrow, or broaden a search. Here are tips for using them in your searches:

Quotes

Quotes can be used to identify and search for a specific phrasing of words strung together. Quotes can be very useful for searching titles. For example,

The Color Purple Searches all instances of the term "color" and "purple", ranking instances where they are together higher
"The Color Purple"    Looks for instances for the entire phrase "The Color Purple", and when those words exist in that order


Boolean Operators

These narrow or broaden a search. Using all-caps in OneSearch is important; you'll get different results by using lowercase.

Puppy AND Kitten  --- Returns instances where both "puppy" and "kitten" are mentioned in the record

Puppy OR Kitten  --- Returns instances where either "puppy" or "kitten" are mentioned in the record

Puppy NOT Kitten --- Returns instances of the word "puppy", but not where "kitten" is included in the record

Created by the librarians at Northwest Arkansas Community College Library. See their guide for other search hacks: http://library.nwacc.edu/search-hacks/home

Wildcards

Wildcards can be used to allow for multiple characters in a word. You use a wildcard operator to replace a character in a word, or a word ending.
 
Single character wildcards: ?

Example: wom?n = women or woman

Multi-character wildcards: *

Example: explain* = explained, explaining, etc.