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UGS 303: Religions in Practice / Newman

Keywords are important

Ways to brainstorm keywords for more flexible searching

After learning more about your topic in encyclopedias (or Wikipedia), brainstorm all the different ways people talk about your topic. 

You want synonyms:

different words for hymnal are hymnbook, hymnary, and book of hymns

Sometimes you also need to think of related terms to narrow your search - as in, what about gravestones do I want to learn?

different ways to say gravestone and carving

Use these words to search article databases for indepth research. From there, you can learn more about what scholars are talking about and further limit your topic.

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