You've learned about keywords and key phrases. You've learned how to choose synonyms. Now it's time to talk about putting all those different types of keywords to work in a search!
PRO TIP 1
Make a list of all your keywords! (This includes key phrases and synonyms.)
There are many ways to "build" a search, but the easiest technique is to start small and build up. This is called broadening a search. Once you start your search, then you use the results you find to modify that search and continue building it, until you find what you want.
Example
My topic is: The most popular young adult novels today have dystopian themes.
Keywords: "young adult"; novels, dystopian, popular
Synonyms: teen, teenage, books, stories, apocalyptic, "in demand", favorites
Are there more you would add? You might think of good synonyms that I missed! Go ahead and open another tab and go to galileo.usg.edu and follow along!
|
KEYWORDS |
SEARCH RESULTS |
Search #1 |
"Young adult" dystopian |
I see a lot of results ABOUT dystopian fiction, but not about their popularity. But that gives me a clue. Fiction may be a good keyword! |
Search #2 |
"young adult" dystopian fiction |
Similar results as my first search. but I'm not seeing sources about how popular it is. Maybe I need to add popular to my search. |
Search #3 |
"young adult" dystopian fiction popular |
Now my results are mostly about television, or film. The word fiction is not specific to books, so maybe I want to use novel instead, going back to my original keyword directly from my topic. |
Search #4 |
"young adult" dystopian novel popular |
I see popular narratives, and more literary criticism, but I don't see results talking about the popularity of the novels. A-ha! Popularity. Let's change popular to popularity. |
Search #5 |
"young adult" dystopian novel popularity |
BINGO! I see several articles that specifically address the popularity of dystopian young adult novels! |
See how I used my keywords and added them slowly, tweaking them one by one based on my results? That's how you "build" a search. Continue playing around with this. Try changing "young adult" to teen, or novel to book. Think about the changes and how they modified your results.