Tips on Starting Your Library Research
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The document provides tips for conducting searches in a library catalog. It recommends starting by focusing a topic, such as researching subtopics related to Vikings by doing a subject search in the catalog. It also suggests choosing important search terms from the topic and finding synonyms. The document explains different search operators like AND, OR, and NOT to narrow or expand search results, as well as using quotation marks for phrases and truncation with asterisks. It advises combining these operators, along with parentheses, to create an effective search string.
Tips on Starting Your Library Research
- 1. Search Tips University of Arkansas Libraries January 2014
- 2. How to Start a Search Focus/narrow Project Do your topic on the Vikings? a subject search in the library catalog to get a list of subtopics for “Vikings”
- 4. You may discover you’d like to research Viking folklore, or the Viking period in Ireland. If you like, you can click on the topic to see the books we have.
- 5. Here’s the catalog record for the book. It’s a good idea to start with a book, especially a reference book, to get some background info and terms for your topic.
- 6. Choosing Search Terms Topic: collapse of Viking settlements in Greenland Pick out most important words Viking and Greenland Find synonyms for these words Example: ???? Collapse Failure abandonment
- 7. Search Tips AND Narrows your search results by adding more requirements Vikings and Greenland OR Expands your search Collapse or abandonment or failure NOT Narrows your search Vikings not Dublin
- 8. Search Tips Quotes Use for phrases Brings back only occurences of the exact phrase: “ecological collapse” Truncation Use * to find variants of a word root Ecolog* brings back ecological, ecology, ecologist
- 9. Combine Search Operators Use parentheses () to organize similar terms: Viking* and Greenland and (collapse or failure or abandon*) not Iceland