Keyword Searching

Keyword searches look for a particular word or phrase anywhere within the source, i.e. title, author, subject, publisher, city of publication, etc. so it's important to think about what words you will use to search for a source.

Let's take the research question "To what extent does the western electrical grid utilize renewable energy?"

• Pull out the main concepts in the question western electrical grid renewable energy and try those.
• You can also brainstorm similar words for a keyword. For instance, in addition to renewable energy, try

wind power solar power hydroelectric power wind turbine wind farm solar farm thermal energy

Try Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT

• AND includes a search for a source containing both terms (narrower search) western electrical grid AND wind power
• OR searches for sources containing either word (broader search) western electrical grid OR solar power
• NOT searches for a sources containing one word but not the other word (narrower search) western electrical grid NOT wind power

Check out this link for a visual explanation of Boolean operators

Truncation - truncating (shortening) a keyword searches for everything containing that root word. Utilize an asterisk * to tell the database to search for anything that contains the word and any possible ending. For example, if using teenager as the keyword, use teen* to pull any source containing teen, teenager, teens.

Quotation marks allow you to search using exact words in a phrase. By enclosing the phrase with quotation marks, the database will search for sources only using that phrase. For example, using "western electrical grid" allows results that only use that phrase.

Wildcard searches utilize a ? for different spellings or endings. For example, using col?r will return sources with the word color, colour, coloring, etc.

Scholarly Sources

What is a scholarly source? There a some agreed upon common characteristics . . . . a scholarly source will. . . .

• Always contain footnotes and/or a lengthy bibliography (the writer wants to prove she's done her research)
• Often begin with an abstract (that's a fancy word for summary of the source)
• Tend to have a serious, sober look with no images and a easily read font (her writing speaks for itself and doesn't need sprinkles)
• Are written by a scholar in the field or someone who works in the field (she eats, sleeps and thinks about the field she's in)
• Uses language specific to the field so assumes the reader has some background to understand (she's talking the talk)
• Is peer reviewed which means her work has been vetted by other experts in her field
• Are often published by a specific professional organization (yep, that's a seal of approval)

Check out this chart that shows the differences of different publications.

Where do I find a scholarly source?

Well, the easiest place to find a scholarly source is to access the EBSCO database. If you're on campus, just click on the icon below. If you're at home, make sure you have the log in information (psst . . ask Ms. Whitted, the librarian)

But maybe you want to see if there is anything outside of the database that you can use. Check out these links to other databases that can provide scholarly sources. Sometimes, a user might have to log in as a student of a university or may have to pay a fee for usage - we don't expect students to have to pay for a source so maybe skip that database and try another.