Try using quotation marks when researching phrasal concepts (e.g., "European Union") or conducting known-item searches for titles:

• For example, Donut Day will search for items with the words Donut AND Day

However, "Donut Day" in quotation marks will search for the documentary with the same name.

When pairing two or more keywords with another keyword, it is helpful to "nest" the former terms within a larger Boolean search.

For example, (memory OR nostalgia) AND Japan will return results for Japan and any one (or both) of the parenthetical terms.  

(Many catalogs or databases will have an "advanced search" option, which provides multiple search bars to facilitate nested searching.)

Most catalogs and databases enable  variations of keywords by using truncation (*) or wildcard (e.g., ?, $, !) symbols.

For example, you could search for politic* to find poltic, politics, political, politicking, and so on.

Wildcard searching works similarly: a search for t??th will return results for teeth, tooth, tenth, and so on.

Ctrl F 

Opens a search box so that you can find particular words or phrases on a page. Very helpful for long PDFs.