Library: CHEM 151 (Roberts): Search terms

Search for books and articles using keywords

1. Your First Keywords

The first keywords you try in your searches will probably come from:

The research topic your teacher gave you
Vocabulary used in your textbook and in class discussions
Your natural way of describing your topic

2. Check a thesaurus: Better keywords = better articles

You'll probably need to find better keywords as you learn more about your topic. You can collect additional keywords from:

Thesaurus.com or Merriam Webster Thesaurus

3. Run a test search! Perfect your search strategy by 'mining' the best articles for the most powerful search terms:

Using the thesaurus terms and your own keywords, test your search strategy. Pick the best 1 or 2 articles in your search results, and refine your search by 'mining' for search terms within them:

check the words you see in article titles.
look for good keywords in the abstract if there is one; abstracts are most common in scholarly articles.
look for subject terms added by the database provider; when present, these are from the database's own controlled vocabulary and are effective and powerful search terms; scholarly articles almost always have a subject terms list.
most of the time, 2 - 3 search terms will produce a useful set of articles on your topic!
sample scholarly article with embedded keywords/subject terms: Biological and Physical effects of brine discharge from the Carlsbad desalination plant and implications for future desalination plant constructions

Database controlled subject terms

Keywords	vs.	Subjects
natural language words describing your topic - good to start with		pre-defined "controlled vocabulary" words used to describe the content of each item (book, journal article) in a database
more flexible to search by - can combine together in many ways		less flexible to search by - need to know the exact controlled vocabulary term
database looks for keywords anywhere in the record - not necessarily connected together		database looks for subjects only in the subject heading or descriptor field, where the most relevant words appear
may yield too many or too few results		if too many results - also uses subheadings to focus on one aspect of the broader subject
may yield many irrelevant results		results usually very relevant to the topic

Putting keywords together: building a search strategy

Putting Keywords Together

AND goes between keywords that you want to add together from different columns

“ “ [double quotes] go around key-phrases (i.e., when your key term is made up of more than one word, eg. "yellow fever")

OR goes between keywords that are from the same column—use ( ) to group them : best for synonyms or closely related terms, eg. (fear* or anxiety) AND (shy* or timidity)

N3 goes between words that you want to find close together in the articles

* [asterisk] goes at the end of a word stem that could end in multiple ways (eg. play* searches for play, plays, played, playing, player, players)

Examples:
stress AND children	Use AND to narrow your search to get fewer but more focused results.
elderly OR geriatric	Use OR to broaden your search to get more results.
“post traumatic stress disorder”	Use double quotation marks to search for a phrase
stress AND prevent*	Adding an asterisk () will search for prevent, prevents, preventing, prevention*, etc.
stress AND (exercise or fitness)	Searches for either exercise or fitness and combines them with stress.

Boolean operators

courtesy of PGCC Library

CHEM 151 (Roberts): Search terms

Search for books and articles using keywords

Database controlled subject terms

Putting keywords together: building a search strategy

Boolean operators

How many search terms?