Search Strategy

​Determine Keywords
​
The search terms or keywords you use to search are what determine the results you get. 

Here's a helpful exercise to help you generate keywords:
1. Express your topic in a topic sentence:
"What is the effect of television violence on children?"

2. Identifying the main ideas or concepts within that topic sentence to generate keyword search terms:
"What is the effect of television violence on children?"
= Effect, Television, Violence, or Television violence and Children

3. Brainstorm related terms or synonyms that describe your main ideas to expand your search terms:
Television = media, TV,
Violence = aggression,
Effect = influence,
Children = toddlers, youngsters, youth

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​​Boolean Operators

AND, OR, and NOT
used to combine keywords in searches 
They can be used in most search engines, databases, and online catalogs. 

AND: Combines keywords to narrow a search. For example, "cats AND dogs".
OR: Combines keywords to broaden a search. For example, "cats OR dogs".
NOT: Excludes keywords to narrow a search. For example, "cats NOT dogs".

Tips for using Boolean operators
To specify the order in which search terms are interpreted, you can use parentheses. 
For example, "(cats OR dogs) AND tricks". 
To make searches more focused, you can use the AND operator to combine multiple terms. 
For example, "cats AND dogs AND tricks AND food". 
You can use Boolean operators with other search tools like quotes and truncation.
For example, "global warming" AND "climate change"

Note:  "truncation" is a search technique where you shorten a word by adding a symbol (usually an asterisk *) at the end of its root, allowing you to retrieve various forms of that word simultaneously
Example:  Searching for "child*" would retrieve results containing "child," "children," "childhood," etc.