Drill, Baby, Drill! Drilling Down in Search Results

How do you narrow down your results when a database search brings up too many hits to browse through? One way – available in more and more databases – is to drill down through the categories of hits listed alongside the results themselves.

These categories (sometimes referred to as facets, clusters, or result groups) can represent different subjects, types of publications, formats, dates, or other aspects of the items that came up when you entered your search terms.

Click on one of them and only those results from your original search that match that category will be shown. The categories can also help you identify other terms to search for, apart from your original terms.

Here are just a few of the databases in which you are able to drill down in this way: Communication & Mass Media Complete; LexisNexis Academic; Holmes One Search; Business Source Complete.