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Suicide and Suicide Prevention : Academic Resources

Information on Suicide and Suicide Prevention for Native Americans

Navigation Tips and Tricks

Several of the databases in this Libguide include articles, studies, or other information that is not topical or relevant to the scope. Search terms that may prove useful in navigating through these sites include "Native American", "indigenous", "indigenous people", "suicide", "suicide prevention", and "prevention plan".

A Boolean is shorthand for a Boolean Search Operator or Modifier. These modifiers will aid your search for topical and relevant articles, studies, and other information by screening out or including information within a single search as opposed to doing several searches with overlapping terms and data.

  • AND: This modifier may be used when two separate terms are relevant to your search, and you'd like to include both.
    • Example: "Suicide" AND "Native Americans"
  • OR: This modifier may be used when two separate terms may be used interchangeably to broaden your search terms. 
    • Example: "Native Americans" OR "Indigenous peoples"
  • NOT: This modifier may be used when a search term is not relevant to your search, and you'd like to exclude all results with the term.
    • Example: "Suicide" NOT "Addiction"
  • Quotation marks: These may be used when you want to search for the entire search term, not just certain key words.
    • Example: "Native Americans" as opposed to Native Americans, which would return any results with "Native" OR "Americans". 

How to Navigate An Academic Database

While similar to navigating a government website, there are a few key differences when it comes to searching academic databases. Most notably, Booleans are going to be more helpful in tailoring your search, and you will be able to quickly search for key terms by field such as author, title, body, journal, and many more. 

Below, you will find an example of the PubMed Central Advanced Search tool. You may choose to limit your search to one term, or you may include more to further narrow your search. There is an option provided for Booleans when two or more terms are used, and you may screen by field for any number of terms.