Connecting Keywords
Once you have your list of keywords use them to search through the library databases for scholarly materials. Many databases allow you to connect your keywords with the words AND, OR, and NOT. These are called "Boolean Operators
Boolean: a system of logic developed by the English mathematician George Boole (1815-64) that allows the user to combine words or phrases representing significant concepts in a keywords search of an online catalog or database.." Knowing how to use these will help you search smartly and efficiently.
- Narrow your search: if your search turns up a huge number of results, and the results are either varied in scope or not relevant, connect your original keyword with another in your list using AND. Doing this will search for both of the keywords and only brings up the records in which both are found.
- example: search for "poverty" and then search for "poverty" AND "crime" and then "poverty" AND "crime" and "gender" to find articles which focus on the intersection between poverty, crime and gender.
- Broaden your search: if your search turns up a very few number of results, you can broaden your search by connecting up keywords which are synonyms using OR. Doing this will search for either of the two keywords within the record.
- example: search for "AIDS prevention" AND "teenagers" then search for "AIDS prevention" AND "(Teenagers OR adolescents)" to find articles which focus on AIDS prevention among the teenage population, whatever term is used to name them. Note: it is always good to nest the keywords you connect with OR in parenthesis, just to make sure they are connected together and the database doesn't try to do something like "AIDS prevention OR teenagers"
- Get rid of irrelevant results: if your search keeps turning up results which are irrelevant to your topic, use the connector NOT to filter out those results.
- example: search for "television" AND "violence" then search for "television" AND "violence" NOT "news" to find articles which focus specifically on violence in television programs, not on the news.