Some basic tips on using filters:

• To find books, dvds or other items in the RISD Library, refine your search by selecting "Available in Library Collection."
• To find scholarly journal articles, refine your search by selecting "Peer Reviewed."
• You can refine a search by limiting by language. However, be aware that many English language articles have not been tagged as English and may be missing from your search results.
• By default, Fleet Search searches through the full text of documents (if available). This may cause a large number of results, and not all are relevant to your subject. Results are returned in a relevancy ranked order. Alternatively, sort results by date newest or date oldest.
• Advanced users: try filtering by database(s). For example, if you are researching urban planning, you might try selecting the databases Art & Architecture Source; Avery Index; Garden, Landscape & Horticulture Index; and Urban Studies Abstracts.

Some basic search techniques:

• By default, Fleet Search searches all terms you have entered, without the need to use AND.  For example: entropy art color will find items that contain all 3 terms.
• To improve the relevancy of your search results, enclose phrases in "quotation marks".  For example: "visual perception" or "climate change".
• To find variant endings for a word, use the * asterisk (truncation symbol.)  For example:  artist* finds artist, artists, artistic.

Need help getting started with your research? Feel free to use our 'Moving from a Research Question to a Search Strategy' handout to brainstorm concepts and keywords for your Fleet Search.