Research Steps
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Step 1—select a topic
Step 2—brainstorming for keywords
Step 3—develop a thesis statement
Step 4—develop a search strategy
Step 5—search for resources
Library Catalog
Keywords
• Flexible terminology
• Easier to do searches
• Less accurate
Keyword Phrases
• Single concept,
multiple words
• Some electronic
resources require
keyword phrases be
enclosed with
punctuation
– Quotation marks
– Parenthesis
Keyword Phrases
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Basic phrase
Proper names
Hyphenated words
Slogans,
advertisements
• Famous quotes
• Movie titles, song
titles, etc.
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(computer disk)
“Native American”
(x-ray)
“kills bugs dead”
(to be or not to be)
“Lord of the Rings”
Subjects
• Predetermined
terminology
– Library of Congress
• More difficult to use in
searches
• Very precise
Keywords vs. Subjects
• Native American
• Indians of North
America
Boolean Operators
• Boolean Operators connect keywords only
• Must be placed between keywords
• AND
– Narrows your search
• OR
– Expands your search with synonymous terms
• NOT
– Excludes words from your search
– If used too much, it can work against you!
Boolean Operators
• AND
– queen and England
– trends and teaching and “united states”
Boolean Operators
• OR
– queen or royalty
– teaching or education or schooling
• AND & OR together
– queen or royalty and England
– trends and teaching or education or schooling
and “united states”
Boolean Operators
• NOT
– queen not hearts
– school not fish
• AND, OR & NOT together
– England and royalty or queen not Latifah
Truncation (Wildcards)
• Non-universal
symbols used in
searching
• Common symbols: * ?
• Used with a root word
• Used to replace a
vowel or single
character
Truncation (Wildcards)
• Root Word- looks for multiple endings of a
word, in this case it takes the place of ‘OR’
– jump?
– jump, jumps, jumper, jumpers, jumping
– athlete and jump or jumps or jumping
– athlete and jump?
Truncation (Wildcards)
• Singular/Plural- replaces a vowel or
single character in a word, in this case it
takes the place of ‘OR’
– wom*n
– woman, women
– history and woman or women
– history and wom*n