ENC2210 - Technical Communications - Concannon

When you use the library catalog or a database, you will need to convert your topic or research question into language the computer understands. The following search techniques will help you with this process.

When looking for information about a topic, try to identify the main concepts. Library search tools do best when fewer words are searched, so finding the keywords for your topic will result in better search results. Typically you want to limit your keywords to one or two phrases, with each phrase containing two or less words.

Here are some examples of main concepts:

• food trucks
• angel investors
• Gainesville population
• entertainment industry
• pop-up stores
• grant proposals

Sometimes you will find better search results if you use more official terms. For instance, the official term for money raised by investors is venture capital. As you search, keep an eye out for results that use these more official terms.

While examining your keywords, consider whether there are other terms that may describe the same concept. You can experiment with your search terms to see which produce the best results.

To keep a phrase of two or more words together, place them in "quotation marks." This means that all search results must have that exact phrase. Be careful with phrase searching! Only place common phrases in quotation marks (a good rule is only two words). Otherwise you may eliminate relevant results that may phrase the topic slightly differently.

Examples

• "food trucks"
• "minimum wage"
• "venture capital"

If you find no search results or not relevant enough search results, use these tips:

• Check your spelling.
• Remove quotation marks from your search terms.
• Review your search terms and see if there are other ways to express the same concepts. Especially pay attention to medical, legal, or other professional terms for concepts.
• Eliminate or broaden one of your search terms that may be less relevant. For instance, if you are searching for death penalty and Gainesville, you may wish to broaden to death penalty and Florida.
• If you added on other limits (such as date ranges or specific types of sources), remove them.
• Consider whether you are using the best resource to search. For instance, if you are looking for a very recent topic, there may not yet be books published about it, as books typically take at least a year to write and publish. Instead of searching the library catalog, you may wish to choose a database with newspapers or magazines.