The words that you type into a search box are the key to finding the most relevant articles and books. That's why they're called keywords!
You'll need to choose keywords carefully. It takes a little brainstorming (and possibly some background research) - and then a little testing and refining. Read below for tips (or watch a short video instead!).
First, identify the major concepts from your topic.
1. Write out a brief description (1 or 2 sentences) of your research topic. It can be very helpful to phrase it in the form of a question that you'd like to answer. (See the research question example below.)
2. Identify the most important 2 - 4 words or phrases from your topic description or research question. These are your key concepts.
Tip:
- To decide which words are most important, imagine that you need to explain your topic to someone using no more than 4 words. Words like "does," "the," "in," or "of" (while useful in a sentence) won't be specific enough, so you wouldn't use those.
3. For each key concept, make a list of other words with the same or related meanings. These will be your keywords!
Tips:
- Use a thesaurus to find synonyms.
- Try to think of specific examples or types.
- Try to think of alternate ways to phrase a concept.
- If your topic is something you don't know enough about yet, it can be hard to think of synonyms, examples or alternate phrasing. Find some background information on your topic to help jump-start your brainstorming!
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Look at an example:
- Research question: "Does social media interaction in online classes help college students learn?"
- Key concepts and keywords:
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college students
learners
adult learners
college students
university students
undergraduates
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online classes
online course
distance education
remote learning
e-learning
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social media
social networking
Facebook
TikTok
Instagram
LinkedIn
SnapChat
LinkedIn
X
Bluesky
etc.
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help learn
learning
success
performance
grades
benefit
positive impact
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Next, test and refine your keywords.
1. Go to the library's homepage and find the Everything search box.
2. Choose one keyword from each concept list. Type those keywords into the search box. Type AND between each one (learn about Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT).
Examples (from our list above):
- adult learners AND online classes AND social media AND performance
- college students AND distance education AND social networking AND success
- undergraduates AND online courses AND Tiktok AND grades
3. Click search and explore the results. Try several of your keyword combinations, and keep a list of the keywords that fetch the most relevant articles.
4. Look closely at the most relevant articles in your search results.
- Keep an eye out for relevant concepts, types or examples that you hadn't considered before.
- Pay close attention to the titles and abstracts - are the authors using different words or phrases to describe the concepts that you're researching?
- You may see new author-supplied keywords or database subject headings that describe your topic.
Add these new terms to your keyword list, if they're a good fit.
5. Create new keyword combinations from your refined list of terms, and test them again!
Examples:
- undergraduates AND online courses AND digital media AND engagement
- student engagement AND higher education AND social media AND impact
- college students AND online courses AND social networking AND academic success
6. As you try out new keyword combinations, it can be very helpful to save the most relevant articles as you go along.
