ENGL 1101 - Comp I - B. Smith: Creating Search Strings
Step 1: Identify Your Key Terms
Often times, you may start your research with a research question in mind. For example:
How have musicals employed satire, parody, and irony as tools for critiquing capitalist values and consumerism?
The first thing you want to do is identify the most important ideas/terms of the question. For example, words like "influence" and phrases like "in what ways" are not terms that articulate the core idea of the question.
How have musicals employed satire, parody, and irony as tools for critiquing capitalist values and consumerism?
Why can't I just put in a question, like on Google?
Library catalogs and databases search for results based on Boolean logic. To simplify this concept for our purposes, the databases 'think' in terms of key terms and their relationship to one another. This is why it's important to develop a healthy list of key terms and know how to connect them to create an effective search string.
OR, AND, & NOT
Step 2: Expand Your List of Key Terms
Once you have identified the key terms from your research question, you can expand your list of terms by including synonyms, antonyms, and related terms.
You can use tertiary sources like CREDO Reference or Wikipedia to find more words to add to your list of terms. Once you begin searching, you may also want to check the subject terms associated with articles/sources that fit with your research question.
musicals
| "musical theatre" | "musical comedy" |
| [include names of specific musicals you want to analyze; Into the Woods, West Side Story, and Sunday in the Park with George, for example] | [include the name(s) of corresponding authors; Stephen Sondheim, for example] |
satire
| parody | irony |
consumerism
| privatization | |
| "free market" | overconsumption |
Step 3: Connect Your Key Terms with Boolean Operators
Now that you have identified and expanded your list of key terms, you are ready to begin creating search strings!
Use the Boolean Operator OR to connect terms with a similar concept. This will expand your search to include many terms related to the same idea.
search: satire OR parody OR irony
Use the Boolean Operator AND to connect terms with different concepts. This will narrow town your result list to reflect more relevant sources.
search: satire AND musicals AND capitalism
You can use parentheses () to group concepts and combine the searching power or OR and AND
search: (satire OR parody OR irony) AND (musicals OR "musical theatre") AND (capitalism OR consumerism OR privatization)
Use Boolean Operator NOT to isolate and remove sources with a term you don't want to show up in your result list.
search: ((satire OR parody OR irony) AND (musicals OR "musical theatre")) NOT Opera
Once you complete this step, you are ready to begin searching!