Developing Keywords
Identify the main ideas/nouns from your research question.
- ex. How will virtual and augmented reality change education?
Brainstorm synonyms for these important terms.
- ex. virtual and augmented reality: VR, AR, 3D environment, artificial intelligence (AI)
education: teaching, learning environment, school, curriculum
The main words you highlight along with their synonyms provide the foundation for what terms you should try searching.
- Developing KeywordsMany times, a good database search is just a matter of the right keywords. This covers how to develop keywords from a research question, and how to modify them for better results. (Does not work with Google Chrome)
- Searching Solutions: KeywordsAnother helpful guide on how to select keywords.
Boolean Searching
Now that you have some keywords to search, let us think about how we can broaden or narrow our search. Using Boolean operators is a helpful way to achieve more refined results.
AND, OR, and NOT (must be capitalized) are the most popular Boolean operators.
Other Searching Tips:
Phrase Searching:
Use quotation marks to make sure phrases stay together. I.E. "offshore windfarm" or "metal lethargy"
Parentheses:
Parentheses tell the database which part of search to look at first. For instance, in the search birds AND ("offshore windfarms" OR "marine windfarms"), ("offshore windfarms" OR marine windfarms") will be looked at first.
- Searching Solutions: Boolean SearchingThis guide delves more deeply into Boolean concepts and provides more examples.
- Search with Boolean OperatorsWatch this brief tutorial on using boolean operators to improve your search.
Filtering
You can also refine your search using any databases' filters. They are often a variety of ways to filter a search via refining the publication date, the format (article, book, conference proceeding, etc.), etc.
- What does the "peer review" filter mean?When you search in the USC Libraries, you may notice a filter on the left-hand side that says “Peer-Reviewed Journals.” And assignments often require you to use peer-reviewed, or scholarly, sources. What does this mean, and why would you use this filter? That’s what we’ll cover in this tutorial.