Need to find scholarly articles written on your topic but not sure how to start? To be successful in your research process, you need to create quality searches in the correct resources.
Subject headings are like hashtags that you see on social media. Librarians "tag" different materials (books, articles, videos, etc) that are on the same topic. Subject headings are links that allow researchers to discover all this different material on a topic.
Example from "Algorithms of Oppression"
Keywords are derived from your research question, your topic development chart, and terms that appear as you search. They will be used as terms in your search string that you will enter into the search bar.
The way that you search within an article database is different than how you might search on Google. If you try to search for your topics as a sentence in the databases, like you might on Google, you will have a hard time finding relevant results. Instead, you need to break down your topic into the most important elements to then create a search string. Before jumping into your research, you should spend a few minutes brainstorming keywords to help form search strings about your topic. You can think of keywords as how you might "tag" your topic.
Example:
To help with brainstorming keywords and keep track of your progress, it might be useful to use a mind map to write down your keywords and draw connections between your keywords, your topic, and the articles you find.
You can draw a mind map by hand or create one online at https://bubbl.us/
Example:
source: http://waldenwritingcenter.blogspot.com/2013/04/mapping-your-mind-with-bubblus.html
Depending on the number of results that are returned from your search string, you may want to broaden your search if you get back too few results. Here are a few tips to broaden your search results.
In some cases, you might be looking for something too specific like a brand name or city. Often, articles are not written about research that is specific to a brand name or city. If you are not finding anything about a brand name or city, it might be helpful to broaden your keyword to other synonmyns.
Example
Databases use search algorithms to mine through the great amount of information. Therefore, it is important to use the search syntax or searching rules that will provide you with the best results.
The Boolean operator, OR, can help you broaden your search results.
OR
Once you complete a search, you might have thousands of results related to your search string. In this case, it is helpful to narrow your search to efficiently find articles related to your topic.
If your search returns too many results, you could refine your keywords by selecting a word that is more specific to your paper.
Example:
The Boolean Operator, AND, with help you narrow your results to articles specific to your topic and keywords.
AND
Another way to narrow your results is to use quotation marks to create a phrase search.
Example:
Databases are comprised of fields linked to specific pieces of information such as author, title, journal title, publisher, date of publication, and more. Limiting your search to specific database fields can yield more precise results.
Example:
Another way to narrow your search results is to utilize the database filters. Once you have completed a search, the results page will provide filters on either the left or right side of the page. You can use these filters to limit down by various fields such as author, date of publication, journal title, and much more.
Once you find an article related to your topic, it is easiest to utilize the reference cited within that article to find other articles similar and related to your topic.
