Library Research Tutorial: Adapted from Canvas Course

Choose important words from your research question/statement.

Brainstorm synonyms (words with similar meanings) of your keywords to create a larger list of keywords.

One way to plan your search uses a table to organize the most important terms by columns, with keywords and synonyms in rows underneath.

For "What effect does television violence have on children?" the table may look like:

This table allows you to construct one complex search query, as in this example from Academic Search Premier, a database that the UNK Library subscribes to.

See the next box for information on those asterisks. 

The database search form in the previous box shows how you might use two Boolean operators ("AND" and "OR") and a wildcard character: the asterisk (*). Using Boolean operators and other symbols affect the search results.

And, Or, Not

The table below shows how Boolean operators can change search results.  This method can also be used with most Internet search engines.

Wildcards and Quotation Marks

Using an asterisk (*) at the end of a partial word will broaden search results by including multiple word endings.  This is called using a wildcard.

• Using child* will search for all variations of the word child, including child's, children, children's, or childhood.

When searching for a phrase (two or more words together), placing quotation marks around that phrase will usually narrow your search results:

• A new search on "Parents Television Council" -- with the quotation marks included -- will find only those records containing the three words together in the exact order.