When you're doing research for a project, you'll likely need to think of search terms to type into the database you're using. To come up with these terms to use for your search, it can be helpful to make a list of words and phrases related to the topic you're interested in. For example, if you're doing research about the lives of giant pandas, you might come up with a list like:
A list like this can also help you discover what you're interested in about your topic. For instance, you might be very interested in giant panda families, but not interested in what they eat. So you might come up with some more words related to panda families:
Once you have a list of words, you can try searching for different combinations of them. See which combinations find the sort of articles you're interested in.
There are also specific ways to structure a search in a database that will help you find more of the articles you want. For example, if you're doing research about the family structures of giant pandas, you might be inclined to type a search such as What are the families of giant pandas like? However, databases understand searches better when they are keywords and phrases connected by AND, OR, and NOT. For example, "giant pandas" AND families.
(Searcher's note: I've put quotation marks around "giant pandas" in the example above to look for it as a phrase, rather than 'giant' and 'panda' separately.)
You may need to try different words for similar ideas to find more search results. Here are some examples from the database Web of Science:
"giant pandas" AND family groups = 4 results
"giant pandas" AND families = 28 results
"giant panda" AND families = 96 results
More results are not necessarily better, though--many of the results for "giant panda" and families have to do with genetic code (families of genes) rather than panda families.
It may take some trial and error to find the search terms that get you the kind of articles you want, and that's normal!
...you can always ask your subject specialist librarian for help. We'll be glad to hear from you!
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