Video recording detailing how to develop a search query from KeyWords.
Identifyng the key search concepts
Identifying related terms to the key search concepts
Using standard search structures to broaden and narrow your search results
While there is not ONE right way to do a search, the strategies identified on this page will improve your results!
Boolean searching involves adding or subtracting terms to your search to either broaden or narrow your search. It uses three terms (AND, OR, NOT) to tell the search engine or database whether to include or eliminate certain terms.
AND: Only resources that contain BOTH concepts
OR: Results containing concepts A or B or both together
NOT: Results containing concept A, excluding any results with Concepts B
Quotation Marks can be used to identify Phrases.
By using quotations marks, you can tell the computer to only bring back pages with the terms you typed in the exact order you typed them.
"math education"
Instead of
math AND education
"immersive learning"
Instead of
immersive AND learning
Truncation allows you to search various forms of a word by finding alternative endings.
The character (*) is placed at the end of the first few letters of a search term or at the end of its root.
Educate*
Retrieves:
Education
Educates
Educated
Take Notes!
Do the same search more than once!
Notice Author Names, Journal Titles, Databases, of ANY sources that look promising. (Remember, the databases help you with this!)
Use the References of a source to help you find additional sources! If you need help going from a citation to a source in hand, ASK!!
Use the Cited BY, or Times Cited in this Database to find more current articles than the one you found.