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.
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."
Boolean Operators
Boolean Operators can also help you narrow or broaden your search. They are AND, OR, NOT.
AND narrows your search. If you are doing a paper on social justice advocacy in college, you could narrow your topic by searching "social justice" AND "freshman." Now you will only get results for resources that talk about both freshman and social justice.
OR broadens your search. If you search for "freshman" OR "social justice" you will get many more results. Some will be about social justice, some will be about freshman, and some will be about both freshman and social justice.
NOT helps you eliminate from your search. If you search "social justice" NOT "freshman" you will only get results about social justice. NOT can be useful if you are searching something that has multiple movements, or meanings, or persons.
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.
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!
Abstracts and Conclusions
When you find something that looks pertinent, read the abstract, 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.
Save your Resources
When you find resources you like or are interested in, save them! Do this by using a permalink or downloading a pdf. Do not save the address bar link or keep the tab open in a database. These time out and do not save the exact result. You can also use a citation manager like Zotero to save your results.
Save your Search Terms
If you do a search and it is successful and gives you many results you are interested in, save that search. Write down somewhere what terms you used, what Booleans you used to connect them, if there were synonyms.
