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Library Research: Your Search Strategy

1. Before beginning your research, try to come up with a topic:

 

 
 
 

2. When you come up with a topic (ex. Martin Luther King, Jr.), try to then narrow down the topic. (example: "the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr."):

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

3. Sometimes you may need to be more specific. (i.e. which writings? One particular writing? Common pattern in his writing? Analyzing the ideas in his writing? The stylistic elements?)

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

4. Come up with a research question (state it in a sentence). Example: What in Martin Luther King Jr.’s Writing style makes his "I Have A Dream" speech so powerful?

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

5. To search your topic effectively, come up with search terms. You will need to use these search terms to search a database effectively (example: King, Martin Luther; writings, authorship, *Afro Americans, Afro American Authors, speeches, Civil Rights Movements)

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

6. Come up with related terms to your topic. They can be synonyms, broader/narrower terms. Terms somehow related to your subject. (Example: Coretta Scott King, African Americans, Black Americans, Blacks, equal rights)

Now, you are ready to phrase a search statement. You must phrase it so a database will know whether you want all your search terms, either one or the other, or to eliminate instances where a particular word or phrase exists:
 

Martin AND King Civil rights and Afro Americans	Database searches for instances where teenagers and divorce MUST appear
Afro Americans OR African Americans	Database searches for instances where EITHER the phrases Afro Americans OR African Americans appear. Both CAN appear or just one of them.
Martin Luther NOT Protestant	Database finds all instances where Martin Luther appears but ONLY WHEN the word protestant does not

Notice that the search statements depend on an OPERATOR to basically give the database a command as to how it should perform its search based on the terms entered: (AND, OR, NOT). This is pertinent.

Once you have come up with a SEARCH STATEMENT, you are now ready to perform searches on the Library Catalog, our periodicals databases, and our other databases.

When using search engines to search the World Wide Web, search statements you enter are slightly different. Take notice:
 

+martin +king +speeches +"martin luther king" +"martin luther king" +reverend	A "plus" sign is used to tell the database that the words MUST appear within the web pages you are searching.
+"martin luther" –protestant	A "minus" sign is used to tell the database that the phrase Martin Luther MUST appear but ONLY WHEN Protestant does not.
"martin luther king" "civil rights movement" "I have a dream"	In most search engines, you MUST surround your phrase with quotation marks. Most search engines treat each word separately. If there were no quotes, the search engine will likely find pages that EITHER have the words "martin," "luther," OR "king." And anywhere these words appear on a web page, meaning a lot of non-relevant results!