Now what do I do?
Once you have chosen your topic and brainstormed some keywords, you are ready to create a search strategy.
Basic Search Strategies
1. Boolean Operators are three words (AND, OR, NOT) that you can use to combine keywords.
Examples:
"clinical depression" AND teen*
"mental depression" OR "major depressive disorder"
depression NOT women
2. When searching the library databases and One Search avoid using whole sentences.
Correct: "clinical depression" AND teen*
Incorrect: I need to find resources about different types of treatment for clinical depression for teenagers.
Incorrect: "resources about clinical depression" AND teen*
3. Quotation Marks can be used to search for exact phrases.
Correct: "clinical depression"
"seasonal affective disorder"
Incorrect: "depression"
"depression AND teenagers"
4. Truncation to save time. Use an asterisk * to take the place of letters in a word so that other forms of the word can be searched at the same time.
Correct: teen* will search for teen, teens, teenager, teenagers
Incorrect: teenager* will only search for teenagers, you will miss teen and teens.