Start with the most specific words or phrases, and then get broader

Write a sentence describing your topic,

1. Pick out the important words or phrases -- these are your keywords
2. Make a list of synonyms for each of the words or phrases
3. Search and see which are the best for your topic.
4. Put phrases in quotation marks:  for example "climate change"

KEYWORDS or KEYWORD PHRASES are words or phrases that describe your topic.

Usually descriptive adjective and nouns.

When you do a keyword search in a library database, it searches minimally, these fields:

• Title
• Subject or Descriptors  
• Abstract
• Author

Boolean Search

And / Or / Not

This is an algebraic concept, but don't let that scare you away. Boolean connectors are all about sets. There are three words that are used as Boolean connectors:

• and
• or
• not

Think of each keyword as having a "set" of results that are connected with it. These sets can be combined to produce a different "set" of results. You can also exclude certain "sets" from your results by using a Boolean connector.

AND is a connector that requires both words to be present in each record in the results. Use AND to narrow your search.

The words 'whales' and 'dolphins' will both be present in each record.

OR is a connector that allows either word to be present in each record in the results. Use OR to expand your search.

Either "ebola"' or "Marburg"' (or both) will be present in each record.

NOT is a connector that requires the some words be present in each record in the results, but only if the record does not contain the word you do NOT want.

"..."  Enclose phrases in quotation marks to make the search engine search it as a phrase

• For example, searching Common Core without the quotes brings up everything that contains the word Common and the word Core anywhere in the text. Putting the words in quotes "Common Core" returns a list of hits that has the two words side-by-side -- a much smaller and more relevant list.

?     A question mark  is called a wild card.  In a search, it replaces one character within a word.

• for example:  you can search Salm?nella if you are unsure whether it is spelled salmanella or salmonella (correct spelling).
• a pound sign (#) is used as a wild card if you want to replace 2 or more letters within a word.

*     An asterisk is used for truncation. It is always placed at the end.  It searches for all words that start with the root phrase before the pound sign. The * represents any number of letters at the end of the word.

• For example, if you want to search variations of a term, or are unsure of spelling:  white-tai* deer 
  will retrieve both white-tail deer and white-tailed deer (correct form)
• This also works well for plurals that have different endings, or for alternate spellings for terms that are spelled differently in other English-speaking countries