Keyword searching can be deceptively difficult! You might be used to searching in Google and other search engines differently - for example, you can search for the question How does Almost Famous portray journalists? in Google and get a bunch of relevant results. Databases and library resources don't understand natural (conversational) language, so your challenge is to translate your topic or research question into a series of search terms (also called keywords).
Identifying effective search terms can take some time. In general, effective keywords and search strategies:
If you wanted to ask the question How does Almost Famous portray journalists? in the library's Articles & Books search, you would start by learning some general information about the film. Taking the time to learn about your topic and do some background reading makes all the difference for identifying effective keywords! In this case, skimming the Wikipedia entry for the film Almost Famous reveals that the plot includes ethical issues within journalism, such as when the protagonist (the journalist) becomes too close with his subjects (famous musicians) and faces a conflict of interest.
So, instead of searching for How does Almost Famous portray journalists? in Articles & Books search, you would incorporate what you've learned about your topic through background reading and try a search like this:
You may have seen the terms AND, OR, and NOT while searching in a database. These terms are called Boolean Operators, and they are used to define the relationship(s) between your search terms.
Below is an example of the search function in the database Academic Search Premier, which includes drop-down menus for Boolean searching.
AND combines search terms. For instance, if someone wanted to research how sled dogs are trained, they could link the term training with sled dog using AND. This search will retrieve only the results that have both terms, thereby narrowing the search.
OR expands your search by retrieving items relevant to either or both terms in your search. This can be especially helpful when there are multiple common ways to express the same term or concept, including acronyms (e.g. AI vs. artificial intelligence). In this example, searching college athletes OR student athletes will retrieve results that contain either or both search terms, ultimately broadening the search.
NOT narrows your search by excluding results that mention the specified search term. For example, if you are interested in dolphin populations around Miami but notice that most of your search results are irrelevant and related instead to the football team the Miami Dolphins, you can prevent irrelevant results related to football from showing up in your search.
Place quotation marks around a phrase to glue those words together in that specific order. For example, the search below is telling the database to search for "the parallax view" with those words in that order. Without the quotation marks, the database would retrieve results containing the individual words the, parallax, and view which would not capture the concept of the film The Parallax View.
Phrase searching narrows your search, and it's possible to narrow down too far and not get the results you anticipated; in that case, try searching again without the quotation marks to broaden back out. Phrase searching is especially useful for searching specific titles (e.g., films) and specific concepts (e.g., "seek truth and report it").
As you're exploring your results and find a source that seems relevant, look for a list of Subject Terms on the page. These are terms chosen by indexers and/or librarians from a controlled vocabulary and applied to books, articles, etc. based on their content. The terms assigned to an item tell you broadly what it is about. These are also typically hyperlinked, so you can click on them to redo your search as a subject search, which is a narrower search that retrieves items with that same assigned subject.
In the example below, the subject terms show that this article is about the Watergate scandal and journalistic ethics. Clicking on *JOURNALISTIC ethics will conduct a new subject search; your new results page will show articles that are about journalistic ethics. Subject terms are a great place to look for relevant keywords that you can try.
