As the video above demonstrates, computers do not understand all of the complexities of the human language, and databases operate differently than Google. Once you’ve decided where to look, you need to determine how to ask. Search tools such as the library catalog and research databases are computer programs that operate based on logic. In this quest you will learn how to effectively communicate with computers to find the information you’re looking for.

Step 1: Find Your Keywords

Oftentimes your research topic will start out as a question. For example:

How does the media impact women’s body image?

In order to communicate this question to a database you will need to translate the phrase into a search query, that is, a logical question that the computer can understand. The first step is to break down your topic into its essential words and phrases. These are often the nouns and adjectives in your question: in other words, the “meat” of your question. The significant words in the example topic above are media, women and body image.

Step 2: Come Up With Some Alternatives

The words that you choose to describe your topic might be different from those used by an author or by the database you are searching. You will therefore want to come up with some alternative words to try if the initial keywords do not retrieve the desired results. Think about any synonyms, plural words, or related concepts. Once you’ve started searching you can improve your results by identifying the words that the database uses to describe the topic (as you will learn later in this quest).

Step 3: Connect Your Keywords with Boolean Operators

Once you’ve identified your keywords you can string them together by using the following Boolean terms:

• AND narrows the search because it requires that all keywords be in the results (media AND women AND body image).

• OR broadens the search by looking for either of the words (women OR females).

• NOT narrows a search by eliminating a certain aspect of a topic (media NOT radio).

For a nice visual representation of these connector terms check out the Boolean machine.

If you do not include any connector words most databases will default to AND, attempting to retrieve results with all of the requested keywords.

Watch the following videos to see the two most common Boolean connectors in action.

Other Search Strategies

TRUNCATING

Truncating is another way to tell the database that it can retrieve multiple forms of a word. Putting an asterisk (*) after the beginning of a word will search for all forms of that word. educat* for example, will search for educate, educator, and educated. Truncating is also an easy way to look for both the singular or plural version of a word (female* will also search for females). Don’t become too overzealous with your truncating, though. A search for polic* might seem like a good way to look for multiple versions of the word policy. But you would also be including other terms that would not be relevant (e.g. police and policing).

PHRASES

Phrases are words that you want to see together. Some databases recognize phrases, but others might try to search for the words separately. Use quotation marks around phrases such as “body image” or "global warming" to tell the database that you only want it to retrieve the words as a phrase. Watch the following video to learn more about keyword searching.

Searching with Subject Terms

A keyword search is a good way to to start looking for information, but what if there are terms being used to describe your topic that you are not even aware of? Luckily you can identify these words by looking at a database’s subject terms. These are standardized terms chosen by experts in the field to describe and organize the materials in a database. View the video below to learn how to locate subject terms.

Limiters

Databases and advanced catalog searches allow you to further specify your search query by limiting the results within specified fields. Common limiters are date of publication, language, source type and subject area. Many databases also include an option to limit to full-text, but it is best to leave this unchecked, as you may be able to access a non-full-text article elsewhere. You can set these limiters before you search, but too many limiters may narrow your results too much. A good strategy is to start with a broad search, assess your results, then adjust the limiters as needed. Click the image below for an enlarged view of some common limiters.

Now that you’ve learned about where to search and how to ask for information, it’s time to create your own search strategy. Download the Search Strategizing worksheet and save it to your computer (Click the upper right arrow of the document below to open in Google Drive. Select File-->Download as -->Microsoft Word (.docx)). Submit the completed worksheet to earn this achievement.