Good search strategies to find articles usually contain between two and four concepts. For example, Staphylococcus aureas AND symptoms are two concepts. Together, they make a complete search strategy. The AND helps the database combine the concepts correctly. If you search for your strategy and get too many results, add another concept to narrow your results. If you get too few results, remove a concept or brainstorm alternate wordings to search for the same information. Searching for food poisoning AND symptoms, for example, is another way to find similar information. Food poisoning can be caused by Staphylococcus aureus.
Library databases are organized, searchable collections of high-quality articles and other resources. Information in library databases has already been evaluated, so you know the information is credible and reliable.
Every database has a purpose, but some are better suited for microbiology than others. These databases may be particularly useful to you for this class:
