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Databases for Dance Research

Tips for Searching Databases

Multiple Key Words or Phrases: Place in separate boxes or separate by Boolean operators. Don’t string them together all on one line as you would in Google.

Put phrases in quotation marks: "Ballet Russes"  "ballroom dance" "pas de deux" 

Truncation: Add an asterisk * to the end of a term to retrieve results with multiple endings. For example: roman* will retrieve records for romantic, romanticism, romance, romantics, etc.

Boolean Operators can help you expand or narrow your search

AND: (“Katherine Dunham” AND "Hollywood choreography") Narrows your search so that only records containing both search terms come back to you.
OR: (female dancers OR women dancers) Broadens your search so that all records containing the term female characters as well as all records containing the term women characters come back to you.
NOT: ("modern dance" NOT jazz) Narrows your search so that you get records about modern dance but none that are about jazz.

Off Campus Access

You will be asked to supply your Saint Mary's user name and password to access subscription databases from off campus.  Problems?  Use our 24/7 chat or contact the Help Desk (507-457-7800 / helpdesk@smumn.edu) or the Library (507-457-1562 / lib@smumn.edu)