It can be difficult to know how to start finding information for your research, creating a search strategy can help you be more efficient. This guide walks through varying components of a search strategy including selecting relevant keywords, where to search, and the more technical aspects of searching you may be unfamiliar with. At any step of the process, you can contact Research Help for additional support and guidance.
Keywords are the terms you enter into a search engine or database to find information on your topic. You need keywords in order to start searching and your search terms will evolve as you learn more about your topic. Useful keywords are specific and descriptive.
Let's say you're interested in researching censorship and combine that with your interest in Billie Holiday; your research question might look something like this:
Putting your question into a search engine like Google or DuckDuckGo may retrieve relevant background information. When you're ready to search in databases like Articles & Books, you'll want to parse out the most important and relevant keywords from your research question. For example:
As you're searching in Articles & Books or another database, you'll come across more information that can help you identify additional relevant keywords. For instance, you come across an article about the censorship of Holiday's song, "Strange Fruit," from 1939. You may add "Strange Fruit" to your search terms.
Remember that searching is iterative meaning you will need to do several different searches using different combinations of keywords to find the information you need.
Looking at the original research question, it may seem like "impact" is a good keyword to include in your search, but search engines and databases are simply retrieving results containing your keywords and will not understand what "impact" means in context of censorship and Billie Holiday's career. To explain and articulate the impact of censorship on Holiday's career, you need to review the content the information you find while searching. This concept can apply to several common words like "advantages," "benefits," "risks," and more.
Organizing or visualizing the keywords you discover can help you be more strategic in finding new and relevant information. One way to do this is creating a mind map that illustrates related concepts and connections. Consider these reflection questions as your build your mind map:
