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English: Search strategy

This guide will provide students, researchers and staff with access to subject and information resources.

What will I be searching?

Analyze your research question in order to identify concepts: 

  • nouns and verbs; 
  • who – what – where - when – why.

OR

Analyze your topic to identify concepts: 

  • nouns and verbs;
  • reformulate your topic;
  • who - what - where - when - why

Collect background information: handbook; reference books,  eg. encyclopedia, subject dictionary, what you learned up to now in your course.

Define keywords:

  • terms which describe what you are searching for;
  • remember to include synonyms, use a reference book (dictionary and thesaurus) to find synonyms. Thesaurus.com
  • British vs American English;
  • Subject Headings for books in the library system and thesauri of the databases [controlled vocabulary];
  • Hierachies - broader and narrower terms.

***Find an article that deals with your topic and study the abstract and  introduction to familiarize yourself with the terminology.

Concepts
Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 Concept 4
xx or yy or zz aa or bb or cc gg or hh or jj mm or nn or qq
       

      

Some Search Hints

Boolean operators AND OR NOT

Use capital letters.

Truncation:

Enter a minimum of the first three characters followed by an asterisk * connect* retrieves connect, connection, connectivity, etc.

Wildcards:

  • Use the number sign # to represent a single character, 

wom#n retrieves woman and women.

Globali#ation

  • Use the question mark ? to represent zero to 9 characters within a term, 

re?4tion retrieves recreation, refraction, relaxation, etc.

Create a Phrase:

  • Use quotation marks for phrase searching " ....."

"South Africa" "South Africa*"

 

 

Keeping Track

Work systematically.

  • Write down, keep track of what and how you are searching. This is just an example.

Eg. XXXXX or YYYYY and AAAAA or BBBBBB

XXXXX and AAAAA

XXXXX and BBBBB

  • Apply the search hints.
  • Search in all the fields - Title, abstract, subjects/keywords, fulltext, as applicable.
  • Some databases keep track of your search strategy.