ELA 11 - Research Paper: Search Strategies

If you are finding too much on your topic, you need to narrow your search. Here are some things to try:

Do Some Background Reading

When I read about World War II in an encyclopedia, I notice that the entry is chunked up with subheaders. One of these might be a great topic that I can have success with.

 EXAMPLES: Battle of Britain, technology of war, invasion of Norway

An online encyclopedia like Britannica is a great tool for this.

Use the Boolean Operator AND

Adding the Boolean operator AND will ask the database to sort results so that you only see things that have both terms.

EXAMPLE: "World War II" AND Britain will bring up World War II events in Britain.

If you are having trouble finding information on your topic, here are some things to try:

Try Different Keywords

You might be searching with the wrong terms, so try others.

EXAMPLE: I searched for "humane societies" but didn't come up with much. First, I can brainstorm for other terms for "humane societies" myself. I can also use one of the topic finder tools. When I entered that term in Gale Topic Finder, I was presented with some other terms to try, like  "shelter" and "adoption."

Use the Boolean Operator OR

OR tells the database that you want results from either of the topics. "Humane societies" OR "animal shelters" will bring up results from both phrases.

Broaden Your Topic on Your Own

EXAMPLE: I want to research the endangered Karner blue butterfly. But I'm not finding much in the databases. I might want to broaden my search to "endangered butterflies in Wisconsin." If I need to go even broader, I could search "endangered butterflies."

Spelling Counts

Make sure your spelling is correct. :)

Use Quotes for Phrases

If you are searching for a phrase, like "World War II", put it in quotes so the database will look for the words all together, not separately ("world" then "war" then "II"). This works for Google, too!

Use the Boolean Operator NOT to Exclude Words

If you put the word NOT between two search terms, that tells the search engine to find documents with the first term as long as they don’t have the second term.

EXAMPLE: "Bears" NOT "Chicago" finds documents that contain the term "bears", but that do not contain information on the football team, the Chicago Bears. 

Use Wildcard Characters to Search Multiple Similar Terms

Using wildcard characters (*, ?, !) allow you to only type part of your search term to search for multiple terms. This is also known as truncation.

Asterisk (*)

The asterisk stands for any number of characters, including none. librar* finds: library, libraries, librarian, etc.

Question Mark (?)

The question mark stands for exactly one character. psych????y finds: psychiatry, psychology but would not find: psychotherapy.

Exclamation Point (!)

The exclamation point stands for one or zero characters. colo!r finds: color, colour.