How do I use keywords to search library databases?
Once you’ve chosen your research topic, you’ll need keywords to put into the databases to find relevant books and articles.
First, let’s take a look at your topic. Maybe you’ve already written it as a research question:
What effect does social media have on eating disorders in teenagers?
Start by identifying the most important ideas or concepts within your topic. These are your keywords!
Social media, eating disorders, teenagers
This is a great starting point, but let’s improve this by brainstorming more terms with the same or related meanings. If your topic is something you don’t know much about yet, thinking of synonyms can be difficult. Try doing some background research in QuickSearch or online to get brainstorming!
| Idea #1 | Idea #2 | Idea #3 |
|---|---|---|
|
Social media |
Eating disorders |
Teenagers |
Once you have your list of keywords, you can combine them in the database’s search bar using AND and OR.
Using AND will narrow your search by adding more concepts. OR will broaden your search by including more ways to describe the same concept.