English 101: Long

Developing a search strategy will make your research process more productive and efficient. When using search engines like Google, we often fall into the habit of typing in our entire research question and getting at least some relevant results. This approach does not work with library resources. Rather than typing in your entire research question, you will need to select the most important terms related to your research (your keywords) and use those instead. For instance, if the topic about which I feel strongly is that college athletes should be paid, I would first try searching student-athlete compensation. 

There will be occasions when your search terms are not yielding good results. This does not necessarily mean that nothing has been written about your topic. It may simply be that you are not using the best keywords. For this reason, you will want to develop a robust list of keywords and keep it close at hand as you research so that when you hit roadblocks, you can try different keyword combinations. 

Quite often we pick a research topic because it is one that interests us, but we may not have a very robust understanding of the full scope of the topic or be able to come up with keywords. This is where background research comes in. Background research is the research you do to learn more about your topic. It is an important step and should not be skipped. Doing background research will help you identify some of the terminology being used to talk about a topic, various aspects and perspectives on the topic, key figures, and pivotal events. All of this information can help you refine your focus and give you great keywords.

Encyclopedias are a fantastic resource for background research. The links below will take you to two collections of encyclopedias to which the library subscribes where you can learn more about your topic.

Step One: Watch the "Choosing & Using Keywords" video on the left side of this page.

Step Two: Open the worksheet attached below.

Step Three: Write out your full topic at the top of the worksheet. Then highlight your keywords.

Step Four: Using the timer below, spend 30 seconds writing down as many synonyms or related words as you can think of for your first keyword. It can be helpful to think of the who, what, where, when of your topic to come up with related words, and you can use the thesaurus link to help you identify synonyms.

Step Five: Repeat Step Four for your other keywords.

Step Six: Don't forget to save the worksheet somewhere. You'll want to refer to it again later.

Step Seven: Go to the "Search for Resources" tab of this guide to learn how to use the keywords you've generated to find resources through Hunter Library.