A good place to start brainstorming search terms is with your topic question: start by picking it apart, focusing on the words that represent the main idea.
i.e.
Topic Question: Do girls who consume more media have lower self-esteem and poor body image?
Main Idea Words: girls, media, "self-esteem", "body image"
OR
Topic Question: Do college students who listen to classical music while they study have better test scores?
Main Idea Words: "college students", "classical music", "test scores", studying
When you have a search term/phrase that contains more than one word, you will need to put it inside quotation marks. This is to ensure that all of the words appear in the search results in their intended order and not individually or out of context.
Potential searches might look like:
i.e. girls AND media AND "eating disorders"
i.e. "college students" AND "classical music"
i.e. "test scores" AND "classical music"
How to Search in a Library Database versus Google
The biggest difference between an academic database and Google is the way we search. In Google, you can type a whole question or a whole sentence and results will return that are relevant to your search. While in an academic database, you need to hone in on a few key words to return relevant results for your research. How do we find those key words? We can show you how!
Books and eBooks are found in FDU Libraries' Discovery Catalog. Unsure how to use the Discover Catalog? Visit our Discovery Catalog User's Guide to learn how to search the Catalog for a book, eBook, print journal, periodicals such as newspapers and magazines, DVDs, and more!
Boolean operators are used to connect and define the relationship between your search terms and phrases. The three Boolean operators are: AND, OR, and NOT.
AND is used when you want two or more search terms to appear in the results.
i.e. girls AND "eating disorders" ; pollution AND "greenhouse gases" ; teens AND alcohol
OR is used when you have an alternative term that is interchangeable with another. In this scenario, you are okay with either term appearing in the results, or both.
i.e. girls OR "young women" OR females AND "eating disorders" ; pollution OR "climate change" AND "greenhouse gases" ; teens OR teenagers AND alcohol OR drinking
NOT is used when you continue to get search results containing irrelevant information, that you would like to exclude.
i.e. If you are doing a search for information on Jamaica the country and you keep getting results for Jamaica, Queens, you might change your search string to: Jamaica NOT Queens AND culture
Sample search strings using Boolean Operators:
ex. 1
Topic question: Is there a correlation between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change?
Keywords: "greenhouse gases" ; "climate change" ; "global warming" ; pollution
Search strings:
"greenhouse gases" AND "climate change"
"greenhouse gases" OR pollution AND "climate change" OR "global warming"
ex. 2
Topic question: Do college students who listen to classical music while they study have better test scores?
Keywords: "college students"; "test scores" ; studying ; "classical music"
Search strings:
"college students" AND "test scores" AND studying
"test scores" AND "classical music"
