Online Search Strategies

Introduction

BEFORE DOING ANY ONLINE SEARCHING, spend about 5 minutes or so writing out a search strategy. While this may seem tedious to do at first, it will save you time in the long run.

Use the worksheet you see to your right to jot down your TOPIC, THESIS, and some information you believe you'll need to discuss in your essay:

Use the table on the right to jot down words or phrases that fit your topic. You can use these words later for BOOLEAN searching.

The linking word AND is particularly useful. For example, typing "apples AND oranges" gets you all items in BGSU's catalog that have both APPLES and ORANGES. If you type "apples OR oranges", you would get all records that have apples in it, as well as all records that have oranges in it (See Boolean Operators).

1. State in one phrase or sentence your TOPIC. What is your essay about?

Example: SCHOOL VIOLENCE

2. State in one sentence your THESIS. What do you want to debate or analyze or explore about your topic?

Example: School violence in public schools should warrant a zero tolerance policy.

3. List any and all information you believe you will need to cover in discussing your topic in depth:

Example:
      • Explain what is meant exactly by school violence (e.g verbal, physical).
      • Explain how prevalent school violence currently is in public schools.
      • Explain what options exist to address school violence.
      • Explain the pros and cons of a zero tolerance policy towards school violence


TERM/PHRASE 1 AND TERM/PHRASE 2
violence AND public education
school violence AND psychology
bullying AND schools

Worksheet (PDF)

The terms and phrases that you jot down in the table are useful for conducting online searching. Unlike search engines such as GOOGLE and YAHOO, academic online catalogs and databases often do not recognize natural language searching, only controlled vocabulary. Therefore, you want to spend some time writing out words to use in searching, truncated words, word phrases, synonyms, and word combinations.

      NATURAL LANGAUGE SEARCHING: Human spoken or written language versus computer language. For example, "information about stereotyping women"
      CONTROLLED VOCABULARY: A standardized collection of terms related to a given SUBJECT area, used for INDEXing and online database searching. For example, "gender stereotypes AND discrimination"

Once you have spent some time writing out your search strategy, you can try your search terms out in an online catalog or database. Mistakes, problems, false starts, and the necessity of re-starting are all part of the search process. Searching takes (1) time, (2) practice, and (3) patience.

If you have difficulty with your search strategy at first, keep these SIX (6) tips in mind:

  1. The linking word AND is best in Boolean searching, especially if you are trying to narrow your scope.
  2. If Boolean searching is producing too few or no results, try a BUILDING BLOCK strategy.
    For example:
          Try typing SATELLITE MAPS in one search and click "Submit"
          Then, MODIFY the search and add another term or phrase, such as AUTOMOBILES.
  3. Make use of SUBJECT TERMS and a database's THESAURUS. You can either click on such words to find more specific sources, or use them in revising your search.
  4. Avoid STOPWORDS in your search, such as OF, AN, and TO. Many academic online catalogs and databases cannot recognize such words.
  5. If you have too few results, try TRUNCATION.
    For example,
          Rather than type EDUCATION, you can type EDUCAT* to get all records that have education, educator, educate, and so on.
  6. If you find a book or article that is particularly useful:
    • Look for other resources written by that author.
    • Look at the sources that writer cites in his/her Bibliography, and then look up those sources. This is known as CITATION SEARCHING.
    • Look at the SUBJECT TERMS for that record and use those to find more records.