Last Updated: Nov 22, 2023 Views: 14135

Keywords - also known as search terms - are the main ideas found in a short description of your research topic.

Words: the Key to Good Research

Say you're looking for information about the benefits of eating chocolate. Some keywords would be:

chocolate, eating, health, diet, benefits

Synonyms are additional keywords describing your topic using different vocabulary, providing more terms to search with:

cocoa, consumption, wellness, advantages

Use different combinations of keywords together, each keyword representing a different one of your main ideas.

Stick with the AND

Pair two or more of your keywords (each representing your different main ideas) with the logic connector AND in the database search box. The search box could be the Multi-Search on the library home page, or one of the databases selected from the A-Z Databases list.

AND tells the search to locate items which contain all of the keywords used in the search. Using the chocolate example:

chocolate AND diet AND benefits

or

chocolate AND consumption AND health

Each combination of keywords will give you different search results because of the way different words can mean the same or similar things.

Content authored by: CD

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