 Hi, my name is Brian Chan, and I am the nursing librarian at the Jeffrey Potten Library on the South Street campus of Murdoch University. Today I will be demonstrating how to use the SYNAL database using a variety of basic and advanced search techniques. When you first enter SYNAL, you will see three rows of search fields and a range of search options below. This is the advanced search mode which is currently the default for Murdoch University Library. If you have a pre-constructed search strategy, you can just pop it into the first row and click search. For example, I am trying to answer the question, does handwashing reduce infection rates from a nursing perspective? I have created a very simple search string using Boolean functions, quotation marks and truncations. I will use this as my single line search. On clicking search, you will see a list of search results. At the top of the list, you will see the total number of results your search has returned. Note this number as we will compare it to later searches. You can also build your own search string from scratch. You will use one line for each keyword with n between each line. Different synonyms or alternative terms for each concept on the same line joined by OR. Remember to use quotation mark and truncations where appropriate. For example, hand hygiene or hand wash, infection control or infection rate, and nursing. The advantage of doing it this way is that it visualizes the process and allows us to conceptualize our search as we are building the search strategy. Click search. This should give you the same results as before. Another technique you can try, which will give you greater control, is to search each concept individually and then combine your searches. Taking the multi-line search you did before, run separate searches for each concept. Don't worry about the search results for each term, just go back and search the next set of keywords. For example, you may run separate searches for hand hygiene or hand wash, infection control or infection rate, and nursing. Now click the search history link which is just above your search results. You will see a list of your previous searches each with a different search ID number. You can now combine your searches as follows. Take the relevant checkboxes for the searches you want to combine. Click search with add. You should get the same number of results as the earlier methods. This technique allows you to edit your search strategy more easily as you just need to edit a previous line and recombine them again. Let's look at a different technique. Previously, we have been using keywords to search. Now we will look at senile headings. When your articles are added to a database, they are read by an indexer who decides what topics are covered and assigns subject headings. These subject headings must be chosen from a fixed list of headings prepared by senile. When you search using senile headings, you will retrieve every article to which such a heading has been applied. To conduct the subject heading search, click the senile headings link in the blue ribbon at the top of the screen. Type in your keyword, for example, hand hygiene, and click browse. As you can see, hand hygiene is not an allowed heading but we should use hand washing instead. To add the senile heading to your search, tick the left handbox and click search database. Next, I will go back to senile headings and look for infection control. Finally, I will combine these two senile headings with the keyword for nursing using hand. Subject headings can be more precise and produce better results. However, it takes time for articles to be read manually and for headings to be assigned. In addition, the headings are revised every few years and older articles may use older versions of the headings. Because of this, you could potentially miss relevant articles if you only search using senile headings. Thus, it is important to combine both free text keywords, which is what we did earlier, with the senile headings to ensure that your search is as comprehensive as possible. For example, we should combine S3 and S7 with an OR. Similarly, S4 and S8 should be combined with an OR. Once you have done this, use the N to create your final search. This is now your final search strategy for this search. Click view results or scroll down and look at your search results. You will see that some have the PDF of the full text, whereas others will have links to find it at Murdoch, which takes you back to our Murdoch University Library and searches for the text in our other databases. Because this list is still quite long, we can use the options on the left sidebar, which are known as filters, to reduce it further. You can use filters to use a publication date and language. For example, you can set the publication date to the last 10 years. You can also filter for just articles written in English. This should reduce your search results further. But note that if you are getting less than 100 results, there is a danger you might be missing important materials. You might want to rethink your search terms and all your filters. Click on one of the search results. On this page, you will see all the indexing data, such as title, author, subjects, etc. Which we have used to find this article within the Sena database. It also provides an abstract which will help you decide if this article is relevant for your research. You will notice on the right many options to print, save and share this information. On the left, you will see links to get the full text in various forms. So we have looked at different ways of searching the Sena database and the information that you can find about each individual article as well as how to get those articles. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the library for our assistance.