CPS Online Library Research Guide (UNH Manchester Library): Searching for Information

Keyword searching is generally what you use when you are first beginning a search. While a very flexible search, without careful thinking, you can spend a lot of time searching and finding irrelevant information. It is perhaps your biggest challenge when doing library research. Following, are tools and suggestions that can help you become a more proficient searcher.

• What do you want to know? Spend some time thinking about what you want to know about your topic. Here are some resources that can help you work through this aspect of the process.
• Use a discipline-specific thesaurus: Every academic discipline has a language somewhat unique to the discipline. Your ability to find relevant resources on your topic will hinge on you using teh correct terminology Here are some resources that can help.
• Find One Article that meets Your Research Needs and Use it to Find Other Resources. Here is how you do this.

Start With a Reporter's Approach

For example: I am interested in the Opioid Crisis - there are many ways you could approach this

• Who: those addicted? (what ages, gender) Law Enforcement? Medical Staff? Addiction Counselors? Parents?
• Where? New Hampshire, United States, a foreign country
• What? All opiods? A specific drug? Treatment? Public policies?
• When? Most current (define), an historical approach?
• Why? Reasons for addiction? What is this an issue we need to study?

By working through a series of questions like this you will be much better able to target what you want to know, and thus find relevant resources to answer the question.

Use a Concept Map

Another approach to determine what you want to know about your topic is to use a concept map. This technique provides a visual approach to keeping you determine the focus of your research. The concept map can:

• Graphically represent and organize ideas.
• Show how those ideas are related to each other
• Help you translate your ideas into a manageable topic.
• Generate questions to focus on in your research
• Set the stage for developing your key word searching list

Example: A Concept Map Developed to study Climate Change

As mentioned earlier, each academic area of study may have its own vocabulary. To become an effective searcher you need to tap into that vocabulary, but how do you do that? Fortunately, there are reference resources that can help. Following are directions for finding them, and links to several that are used as part of teh GSC curriculum:

• Psychology Terms - APA Dictionary of Psychology
• Business Terms - Glossary of Business Terms
• Sociology Terms: Introduction to Sociology
• Literary Terms - Literary Terms & Devices
• Economics: Behavioral Economic Terms
• Education: Glossary of Education Terms

To find more terms do a simple Google search on the academic area terms, example: Education terms, then check out each list. Wikipedia can also be an excellent source of discipline-specific vocabulary.

In general, you may find many lists. If you have a choice select the professional organization's glossary (see APA Dictionary). That will usually be the most accurate and up to date.

If you find an article that meets your research needs, use it to identify other potentially useful articles:

Example of Using an Article to Find Other Resources

Where to Find Keywords and Subjects

Keyword searching is a type of searching you are probably already familiar with. It is how you would typically search web search engines like Google. You think of words or phrases relevant to your topic and enter them in the search box. When searching the library catalog, your keywords and phrases are searched for in all of the fields of the catalog record. It is important to remember that because we are using natural language, the word you use to describe a subject may not be the same word used by all of the authors in the field.

Keyword Search when...

• Your term is jargon, very new, or very distinctive.
• You do not know the exact title or author of the item.
• A variety of terms describe the topic (e.g. Ecology of fish in Potomac River)
• You want to retrieve information by grouping two or more synonyms or terms (e.g. dogs OR canines; adolescents OR teenagers)
• More than one discipline or topic is involved (e.g. statistics AND agriculture)
• You want to exclude documents which are not about your topic (e.g. depression NOT great)
• You don't know the subject heading. (Try a keyword search first, then look at the subject headings and use the appropriate one(s) for your next search)

Subject searching is a type of searching that allows you to look for categories (or subject headings) instead of keywords. Subject terms are searched for only in the subject field. When the catalog record for an item is created it is assigned at least one subject heading. These subject headings are based on a pre-defined vocabulary in which all items determined to be about the same subject are given the same subject heading regardless of the term used by the author. A drawback of many of these pre-defined vocabularies is that the words chosen are not always the most intuitive or obvious choices.

Subject Search when...

• You are looking for information on a broad topic.
• You are looking for information about something, someone, or someplace (books about Mark Twain, not those written by him)
• You want to locate resources about your topic, even those in which the topic is not explicitly expressed in the catalog record, except for in the subject headings assigned to them.
• Your topic is poorly defined. Try a keyword search first, and then search for the subject headings you found.
• You are looking for information that may be represented by a term that has many meanings and can occur in various contexts (e.g. “management”). Browse the "subject search results" list to help narrow or define your topic.

Keywords vs. Subjects - What's the Difference?

All of the words above play a role in helping you find appropriate resources for your research. Now that you have your topic, a few definitions:

• Keywords or Tags: Keywords are used in information retrieval to quickly link a user (you) with the information you need. In academic articles authors are usually asked to assign keywords from a managed list to identify their research topic. These can be enormously helpful to you as you search for additional resources.
• Subjects: a broad area of interest from which a more specific research question can be chosen.  Examples of subjects include: illegal immigration, alcoholism, freedom of speech, computer networks, elementary education, astronomy. In academic libraries the form and assignment of subjects to a piece of  information is an extremely important and controlled process dictated by the Library of Congress.

Here are some key points about each type of search:

Improving Your Key Word Searching

NOTE: Each of these videos were produced by libraries at other colleges and universities. They make reference to services and resources we may not have at GSC. BUT each contains gems of information on how to improve your searching techniques.

Learn how to improve your search terms when searching a database to enhance the relevancy of your search results! Great video from Brock Library

Crafting A Savvy Search Strategy: Part 1

When doing a search in a database, often language that seems the most natural to use isn’t necessarily the most effective when searching for information. Spending time thinking about your topic, breaking it down, and brainstorming search terms will make searching easier - UCLA