SEARCHING TIPS FOR ANY ASSIGNMENT: BEGINNING YOUR SEARCH: Key Words & Search Tips

One of the most important aspects of research is finding the right search keyword, term or phrase. Don't keep trying the same one if you're not getting the results you are seeking. Having term options and finding the right phrasing is often the difference between a successful search or a great deal of wasted time and frustration.

TOP 10 KEYWORD SEARCHING TIPS:

1. Use your teacher's suggestions if any were given.
2. Check out the tips found under the "SEARCHING" tab in any Padua LibGuide. 
3. Write out a brief description of your research topic (preferably phrased in a question you'd like to answer).
   • Identify 2-4 important words from your question, which should be considered key concepts.
   • For each key concept, make a list of other words with the same or related meanings (which will be your keywords/key phrases).
   • Look to the following tips for HOW to find those keywords/key phrases.
4. Slowly start to type the word into Google and look at the suggested phrasing that is under the word you are typing.
5. Use a thesaurus to find synonyms.
6. Try keyword/search term help sites if available. 
7. Test your keywords/phrases by searching with them in databases and websites (.edu, .gov, .org sites preferably).
   • Remember the power of the "and" (see the following examples):
     • NBA AND salaries AND fairness
     • students AND online classes AND learning
   • Also try out the "or" (see the following examples):
     • vegan OR vegetarian
     • teens OR adults AND social networking AND depression
8. Try combining keyword phrases while searching (texting accidents and teenagers), and write down the combinations that offer the best results.
9. Keep track of keyword/phrase successes by handwriting or typing them on a doc, because you will start to lose track.
   • Too many results, try more or narrower keywords.
   • To few results, try broader keywords.
   • Remember to try combining your keywords as well (texting accidents and teenagers).
10. When you find results in databases and articles, slow down and view the author-supplied keywords or phrases (often at bottom of page) or subject headings, etc. and add those words to your list.

For academic research, teachers/professors will discourage or not even permit a Google search, but if you must, at least do a better Google search by trying to stick with .edu, org, and .gov sites...and by putting your sources through the CRAP test (by checking for (C)currency, (R)reliability, (A)authority & (P)purpose/pov). You want to be sure you're looking at a reliable source. Here are some additional tips:

1. If you only want academic sites, which is highly advised for academic research (and not .com - commercial sites), type the following into the search box:  vegitarianism .org .edu .gov  (see additional info in box)
2. ​Quotation marks will always help Google narrow down your topic, so type the following: "Cuban Missile Crisis" (see additional info in box)
3. Trying to find information in a certain time period? Use a range of numbers to search. For example, you would type the following:  teen and texting accidents and 2015...2017
4. Use the words AND and OR to your advantage  (see additional info in box)
5. Consider a Wild Card (*) if you can’t remember a term. You might get lucky.  For example: Put in * Hitchcock or * Bruins + Parma, OH if you don’t remember a school’s name along with whatever else you might know.
6. If you want to search a specific site for information, here's how you do it. Let's say you want to search the topic of euthanasia, but you know that you really like procon.org, so that's the website you'd like to search. You would put the following in your Google search: euthanasia site:procon.org
7. Use a "-" sign to eliminate things. You want to know about bass guitar...not bass the fish, so you would type into the search box the following:  bass -fish  (see additional info in box)
8. Do you love a particular site and wish you could find more sites like that one? Do a similar site search by typing the following:  related:imdb.com  (be sure to have the domain (like .com or .org) listed with the site's name). 

• GOOGLE SCHOLAR:  Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research. However, you may encounter some issues:
  • Google Scholar Issues:(scholar.google.com): If your topic is scholarly(academic), you will find an abundance of resources on Google Scholar; HOWEVER…the results will often be abstracts or names of books or articles (some of which are only available for purchase). For this reason, this tool is very useful at the college level, because all those resources and databases would be available via your college libraries. At this school, we only have access to specific databases. So…(see next point).
  • BIG GOOGLE SCHOLAR TIP: You may encounter free articles, however, so for your purposes, only look at pdf’s. Here's the BIG TIP: to access and see to if the article is viewable or downloadable for free, click on the actual pdf link and not on the name of the article itself. Good luck!!!

So instead of just typing: superhero costume for dogs (which will pull up everything about dogs as well as all things costume as well as all things superhero), type: "superhero dog costumes"

The - symbol will exclude particular terms from your search.  For example, you might want to look up bass in regard to musicians but not fish, so you would put in...

                           bass -fish

(Note: Unfortunately, this technique works when searching websites, but it does not usually work for searching images.)