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Horticulture

This guide presents library resources for the field of horticulture.

Find articles

Visit the JSTOR database to access the Global Plants collection, which is built in collaboration with libraries, herbaria, archives, museums, and universities to present information on "75% of the world's biodiversity". You can search by plant name, geography, herbarium, or resource type (artifacts, books, and drawings).

The Plant Science collection offers access to botanical resources from around the world. You can view research articles, plant type specimens, foundational reference books, and more than 20,000 botanical illustrations and photographs.

Boolean Operators

Building Search Strings, Part I: Boolean Operators, created by OSLIS Secondary Videos (YouTube video)

More Search Strategies

Building Search Strings, Part 2: Nesting, Phrase Searching, Truncation, & Wildcards, created by OSLIS Secondary Videos (YouTube video)

AND

Type AND between your keywords to narrow your search. The database or search engine will only retrieve those articles or web pages that contain both words. Using AND will decrease the number or hits or articles or web pages in your result list.

Example: school AND crime

Note: Some databases and search engines (such as Google and Craigslist) allow you to type a plus sign (+) in front of a keyword when doing a basic search. This works the same as AND.

Example: +school +crime

 

School And Chrime search

OR

OR Type OR between your keywords to broaden your search. The database or search engine will retrieve those articles or web pages that contain at least one of these words. Using OR will increase the number of articles or web pages in your result list (especially if not used in combination with AND or NOT). Use OR between keywords that are synonyms or have similar meanings. Example: baby OR infant

 

Search for Baby or Infant

NOT

Type NOT before a keyword to exclude that keyword from your search. Using NOT will decrease the number of articles or web pages in your result list. The best use of NOT is when you are searching for a keyword that may have multiple meanings.

Example: bat NOT baseball

 

Search for bat Not base ball

Combining Boolean Operators

Use parentheses ( ) to keep combination searches in order. In the example below, the database or search engine will retrieve articles or web pages that must contain the word law and at least one of the words in parentheses.

Example: (ecstasy OR mdma) AND law

 

Search combining law ecstasy mdma

Truncation

Truncation, also known as stemming, uses a character such as asterisk (*) or question mark (?) at the end of a word, which allows you to search for a root form of a word and pick up any ending.

Example: typing teen* will find teen, teens, teenage, teenager, teenagers.

Notes:

  • Be careful not to end the stem or root of a word too early to retrieve too many results. Example: typing cat* will find cat, cats, catalog, catastrophe, catsup, etc.
  • Different databases use different symbols to truncate words. However, most of our popular databases, such as our library catalog, Academic Search Complete and Access World News (NewsBank) use an asterisk (*) as their truncation symbol. If in doubt, check the "Help" screen for the truncation symbol.
  • Some search engines, such as Yahoo! and Google, automatically use truncation without you having to type a truncation symbol.

Wildcard Symbols

Wildcard symbols can be typed in place of a letter or letters within a keyword if you are not sure of the spelling or if there are different forms of the root word.

Example: wom?n will find both women and woman.

Note: Again, check the Help or Tips links available on most library databases and Internet search engines to verify the wildcard symbol that should be used - usually an asterisk (*) or question mark (?)

Screenshot of Virginia's Community Colleges login screen

If you click on any Reynolds Libraries database link from off-campus, you will be prompted with a Virginia's Community Colleges login screen.

Use your My Reynolds login & multifactor authentication (MFA) to access any of the library databases from off-campus. 

Review our Off-Campus Access page for more information on accessing database resources from off-campus.

If you have any issue accessing the library databases from off-campus, email library@reynolds.edu or call 804.523.5211 or 523-5220.

*ProQuest Central eBooks: If you are accessing a ProQuest Central eBook from ON or OFF campus, you will be prompted with a Virginia's Community Colleges login screen. If you are accessing a ProQuest Central eBook from the library catalog, you will also be prompted to select your institution, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College.