E 303: Plan II World Literatures, Jorie Woods

1. Save time, prepare to research!

• Break your research question into key concepts (you'll connect these in your paper to make an original argument)
• For each of these concepts, brainstorm multiple keywords

• Try this keyword tool to brainstorm online and send the results to yourself.

2. Combine keywords using AND and OR:

• Too many results? Try using quotation marks around an exact phrase. Ex: "There Eyes Were Watching God"
• Still too many results? Narrow using AND. Ex: "Their Eyes Were Watching God" AND narrat*
• Too few results? Broaden using OR. Ex: "Their Eyes Were Watching God" AND (narrat* OR voic* OR tell OR tells)
• Put parentheses around synonyms.
• The asterisk finds multiple endings from a root word. Ex: wom* will bring back women, woman's, wombat, etc.

3. Brush up on the search tools available:

• Here are search tips for Google.
• Search tips for the Catalog are at the bottom of the Advanced Search page.
• Databases often include their own search tips. Tip: Look for a help link or a gear symbol.

Your instructor or subject librarian may throw around the term "library database" a lot, but what exactly do they mean? This video from RMIT University in Australia explains the term and how you can use databases for research. (Plus, the narrator has a great accent!)

Transcript available through YouTube.