First-Year Writing Seminar

Library searches work best when you enter search terms in small bites rather than a whole question. Think about:

• The who, what, where, when, and why of your topic
• Synonyms, related concepts, alternate spellings
  • For example: young adults or adolescents or teenagers
• mGeneral vs. specific - a more general term will get you more results than a more specific term
  • For example: students is more general while high school students is more specific

Searching with Keywords

When searching in the Library catalog and in databases, searching using keywords will be key. Unlike Google, databases and library catalogs do not recognize sentences or questions but instead recognize words and phrases. When you start searching for resources for your topic, think about what words are key to that topic and use those words to search.

Synonyms

If you do not find what you need right away, do not be discouraged! Try searching for synonyms of your keywords. 

Combine keywords in a search (these are also called Booleans):

• AND narrows by connecting two terms. The search results must contain both terms. 
  • Example: "mental health" AND "social media" 
• OR broadens your search. The search results will contain either or both terms. 
  • Example: children OR kids
• NOT eliminates a part of your search. The search results will exclude a term. This works best if the terms are similar or have multiple meanings.
  • Example: "black panther movie" NOT "black panther animal"

Quotation marks for Phrase Searching

Use quotation marks to search for a specific phrase. For example, if you are searching for "Boston College" in quotations, you will only get results that have that phrase. Searching without quotation marks will get you results about Boston and results about colleges in general, and probably some about Boston College. Using the quotation marks ensures that you get results about Boston College.

Truncation

What if you are searching for sports at Boston College? If you search "sport*" using an asterisk, you will get results for "sports," "sport," "sporting," etc. The asterisk tells the catalog or database to look for anything that has sport as the base. This means you don't have to try the search with each variation of the word.

Wildcards:

Wildcards let you search for plurals or multiple spellings of a word. If you search for "wom*n" you will get results including both "woman" and "women." If you search for "labo*r" you will get results for "labor" and labour."

Abstracts, Introductions, and Conclusions

When you find something that looks pertinent, read the abstract (the paragraph explaining the article before it begins), introduction, and conclusion to make sure it is useful. Many academic articles are long, and it is better to read the abstract first to make sure that you can use the article before reading the whole thing to only find that out at the end of the sixty pages.

Subject Terms

Once you have found a resource you think is useful, look at it more closely. Most books and articles you find will have a subject or subject headings section. These are essentially tags that indicate what this source is about and can give you other search terms. So if you are searching for "freshman" AND "dorms" AND "food," maybe you find an article and it has "college experience" has a subject heading, or "dining halls." Often subject headings are also links and you can click them to get a list of resources on that topic.

Bibliographies/Works Cited/References

Look at the end of an article to see what resources the author has used in writing this article or book. These might be helpful sources for you too.

Narrow or Broaden your Search

Try narrowing or broadening your search if you cannot find what you need right away. 

For example, if you are searching for "college students" and you get far too many results, try narrowing your result. What are you really interested in learning about? Are you interested in a specific year of college, student life, student spirit? Add in another term or change your term to narrow your results. If you are searching for "sophomore dorm experience" and are not getting any results, try broadening your search or changing some of the search terms: perhaps try "college dorm experience," or "sophomore living experience." 

Adaptability and Patience

Searching is difficult. It requires you to think of synonyms, to change your approach, to learn new terms, to broaden or narrow your idea. It can be frustrating, but it can also be exciting. Try new words, think of what someone else might have called your topic or your idea. You might find something you weren't expecting!