Library Guides: Getting Started with Library Resources: Start Here

Search Using Keywords

You may think that you don’t need to learn how to search a library database, because you’ve had good luck searching Google (or another web search engine) to locate information. But searching a library resource is not the same as searching for information using Google.

In Google, you can type a question in the same way you might ask it in a conversation, for example: What are the health benefits of regular exercise? This is called searching using natural language.

In a library resource, you should search using keywords, and not natural language; statements or questions. Keywords are usually nouns, e.g. people, places or things. Don’t include words like why, what, where, when, if, the, etc. in your database search.

Before searching a library resource, identify all the keywords in your topic, or research question. For the question above, you could start your search with the keywords health benefits exercise.

Keywords

Keywords are words that hold the essence, or the key idea, of what you are trying to find. Keywords are words with the most meaning. Using relevant keywords in your search will lead you to better information. If you are searching towards an assignment, you can identify the first keywords from the topic itself.

Topic example: Why do some Canadians choose to purchase electric cars?

Keywords: reasons, Canadians, purchase, electric cars

Synonyms

Synonyms are words that have the same, or similar meaning as the main keywords. Synonyms and keywords are interchangeable, which means that the meaning of your search will remain the same.

Here are a few synonyms for the topic: Why do some Canadians choose to purchase electric cars?

reasons = decisions

Canadians = Canadian people, Canadian drivers

purchase = buy, acquire

electric cars = hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, hybrid cars

Related Terms

Related terms are words that generally mean the same thing as the main keywords. For example: tablet - device, car - vehicle, pop - carbonated drink. While related terms don’t mean exactly the same thing as the words they are replacing, they are an excellent tool for broadening the scope of your search.

Here are a few related terms for the topic: Why do some Canadians choose to purchase electric cars?

reasons = incentives, preferences

Canadians = Ontario drivers, drivers, motor vehicle operators

purchase = lease, rent

electric cars = driverless cars, environmentally friendly vehicles

When searching for information in a library database or a search engine, you may want to combine some keywords, or exclude certain words, to ensure that your search results are more focused or relevant to your topic.

Boolean Operators (Operators), including AND, OR, and NOT, are words that make it easy for you to customize the results of your search.

TIP: In library databases, you don’t need to capitalize proper nouns (e.g. Twitter, Trudeau or Ontario), but Operators must be typed in all capital letters, e.g. NOT, AND, OR.

AND

Using the AND operator tells the database that all words, or terms, that you have connected with AND must be found in any results returned.

If, for example, you are searching for articles about marketing with Twitter, you could search for: marketing AND Twitter. If either word (marketing or Twitter) is not found in an article, it will not appear in your results.

NOT

The Operator NOT will narrow your search results by excluding or removing a specific word or words from the search results.

For example, if you’re researching marketing but are not interested in articles about marketing using Twitter, you could search for: marketing NOT Twitter.

Your results from this search will not include any articles that contain the word Twitter.

OR

For a broader search, to find articles that discuss marketing with Facebook or Twitter, you could use the Operator OR, e.g. marketing AND (Facebook OR Twitter). The results from this search will include articles that talk about marketing and Facebook, or marketing and Twitter, or marketing and Facebook and Twitter.

In the above example, you'll see that brackets are included in the search. When you are using more than one Operator in a search (e.g. AND and OR, or NOT and OR), you will need to group your keywords and operator words using brackets, so that the database knows which action to perform first. (You might remember this concept from Boolean Algebra).

When searching for an exact phrase, (i.e. exactly the same words in the same exact order), most library databases support the use of "quotation marks" (“ “) around the phrase, which could be two or more words.

Quotation marks instruct the database to return results that include that exact phrase. Searching for an exact phrase can help to reduce the number of irrelevant results.

For example, if you search for articles about body language, your results will include both words, but body might be on the first page of the article, and language on the last.

Searching for “body language” will only return results which include that exact phrase. Using quotation marks to search for an exact phrase will narrow down your results. Exact phrase searching with quotation marks will also work in Google.

There are, however, a few databases which do not recognize or support exact phrase searching using quotation marks. If you get no results, or too few, remove the quotation marks from your phrase and search again.

When keyword searching you may want to search for all variations of that word. You may miss relevant and useful results if the term you have searched for does not appear in that exact form in an article or book. Wildcard symbols can help you to find word variations.

A wildcard is a special character that replaces one or more letters in a word. Common wildcard symbol used in different databases include:

the question mark (?)
the pound sign (#)
the dollar sign ($)
the percentage symbol (%)
the exclamation mark (!)

If you want or need to use a wildcard in your search, check the help section in the database you’re using to find the wildcard options. Wildcard examples include:

globali?ation (the $ sign could be replacing an ‘s’ or a ‘z’)
colo#r (the # could replace one extra letter, and search results will include color or colour)

Let’s imagine we are searching for articles about house prices in Canada. If we search for those keywords only, house prices Canada, we may miss articles that include the words houses, housing, price, pricing, Canada’s or Canadians. If we truncate each word, we will get more results.

To ‘truncate’ a word simply means to shorten it by removing one or more letters to go back to the root word.

So, to search house prices in Canada, we could truncate all keywords and search for: hous* pric* Canad*.

You do need to be careful using when using truncation. Truncating too many letters from a word can lead to unexpected results. For example, searching for nursing in Canada using the truncated word nurs* will also bring back results about nurseries, and truncating Canada to Can* may retrieve articles with words like cantaloupe, cancer, canned, etc.

Types of Resources

Books and eBooks

From an information perspective, print and ebooks are similar. The main difference between them is access. Print books are physical items, whereas ebooks are digital files, that can be accessed from a variety of devices.

Book publication can take a long time. First, the author researches the topic, then they write a draft. The unpublished manuscript is then sent to a published, edited, rewritten, and finally ... published. This can be a lengthy process and explains why even if a book is released in 2016, it likely doesn’t contain up-to-the minute information.

Why use books/ebooks? Books provide overviews, background, history and introductions as well as in-depth examinations of topics. They are useful when you are looking for in-depth information on a topic, or background overview of a subject area.

Journal Articles

When researching a topic for your academic work, you may be asked to find scholarly journals, or work with academic articles. In a research article a researcher, or group of researchers, present findings of their research.

Academic journals can also contain opinion pieces, book reviews, literature reviews, etc.

Research is multidisciplinary. In order for an article to be published in an academic journal, it has to go through a formal submission process, and often, a peer review process.

Peer reviewed journals have a board, or panel of subject experts, who review articles submitted for publication, often working with authors to edit their articles before publication. Not all academic journals are peer reviewed.

Download the below documents to learn more about Journal Articles:

Trade Magazines

Trade magazines print articles aimed at people working in a particular field. Often, articles published in trade journals are written by practitioners in the field. The content in trade journals focuses on working in the profession, trends, news related to that field, or trade, rather than academic research.

Consider trade journals to be more practical than the more theoretical and philosophical academic journals.

Examples of trade journals include:

Popular Magazines

Popular magazine articles typically focus on information from pop culture. Articles are usually short, and with images embedded throughout.

Examples of popular magazines include:

In comparison, scholarly articles are long, black and white, and have statistical tables and graphs included as part of the research. Academic papers also have a long list of references available at the end of the paper.

While popular magazine articles are informative, and often mention academic research, they may not be the best choice to include as part of academic research. To help you decide, read more about popular vs. scholarly sources(opens in new window) here.

Open Access Journals

Open access journals are online academic publications, made available to readers without subscription fees, free of charge. Traditional publishers (e.g. Sage(opens in new window), Oxford University Press(opens in new window)) also make some of their content available through open access.

Examples of open access journals:

Open access articles can be found through Google, Google Scholar, or any other search engine, as well as through the college library.

When using open access literature for academic work, make sure to evaluate the content critically(opens in new window).

Grey Literature

Grey literature refers to materials published non-commercially. These materials can be made available by the government, academia, non-for-profit, business and trade organizations, in print and digital formats. Examples of grey literature include:

Conference proceedings
Reports (e.g. statistical, technical, committee reports)
White papers
Flyers
Newsletters
Fact sheets
Theses and dissertations
Patents
Unpublished materials

Why use grey literature? It is sometimes more current than published research, and it is a great way to supplement your research, providing your project with a full picture viewpoint. You can find grey literature online, by searching Google (or another search engine), and/or Google Scholar.

Websites

Websites are the most prolific of online resources, and can be found using a search engine (like Google). Websites can serve a variety of purposes, here are a few examples:

Individuals - showcase work in a portfolio, to communicate a message
For profit companies - promote their brand, or market their products
Non profit companies - promote their cause
Governments - educate citizens, and publish government based research
Educational institutions - publish information related to programs and courses, as well as information relevant for the academic community
Others

When using information from websites for your academic work, make sure to evaluate the content critically(opens in new window).

Social Media

Social media posts can be a great source of information. Social media can also add to information overload. In order to tap into the most relevant information, identify relevant #hashtags, @profiles, conversation threads, and blogs on your topic of interest.

Here are examples of the different types of social media platforms: