Now you know what information you are looking for and where to search for it, but how do you make computer pull the best results? Much like a translator, you need to speak a language that the computer or database understands in order to get the best set of results. This includes using some of the keywords, search operators, database limiters, and your critical thinking skills to assemble the best search.
When searching for information the terms you use to describe your topic can narrow or broaden your research scope. For this example our research topic will be the Birmingham Campaign.
When you narrow your topic, you use use specific terms to sift through the information, refining your search to a smaller, more focused piece of your research question. In this example, focus your topic on a specific march, boycott, or sit-in. You could fixate on a prominent individual associated with the Campaign, such as Martin Luther King Jr, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Lee Shuttlesworth, Wyatt Tee Walker, James Bevel, Albert Boutwell, or Theophilus Eugene Connor. You could highlight groups who were actively involved, like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) or Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR). All of these options work to filter your research question through a more focused lens.
When you broaden your topic you extend the scope of your research to encompass larger range of ideas. In this example the Birmingham Campaign as a key event of the Civil Rights Movement. You could focus on the entire year, as 1963 was a pivotal year for the civil rights movement which included events like the Children's Crusade, the March on Washington, 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, and Chicago School Boycott. You could widen it even further to race relations in America over a couple of decades, from our nation's inception, or present day issues.
When parsing material that you enter into a search, databases do not know what words need to stay together, it just searches them all individually. For example, when I type in political art it searches political and art separately.
In order to keep these words together I need to use quotation marks around the phrase "political art" to make sure it only brings back political art in the search results.
Databases do not understand full phrases, like "list of astronomical objects named after roman mythology." Instead, use your keywords with boolean phrases (AND, OR, NOT) to help the databases understand what you are looking for.
AND - both sets of keywords must appear in the search results
OR - one keyword or both keywords can appear in your search results
NOT - the keyword(s) that follow will not appear in the search results
When searching library databases using limiters can help narrow and refine your search. While a 'basic search' may have two to three limiters, an 'advanced search' has a database's full range of limiters.
In the example below from PsycArticles limiters can be more generalized, like narrowing by year, full text, or peer reviewed, which are more common across databases. They can also be specific to the database being used. Since PsycArticles is a psychology database, the limiters tend to lean towards information and tools commonly used by psychologists, such as age range and population, research methodology, psychological test or measurement, classification, and more.
Keep in mind that the more limiters you add, the narrower your search will be, so begin with a few and add more as needed.
Some library databases have controlled vocabularies, or "an organized arrangement of words and phrases used to index content and/or to retrieve content through browsing or searching (Harpring,12)." These categorize similar terms under one umbrella term, for example soft drinks is used to depict soda, pop, soda pop, or coke. In library databases these controlled vocabularies are often called subject headings and are housed in a thesaurus. The example below, from EBSCOhost, shows how the term "car" is viewed in this particular controlled vocabulary and shows what search terms should be used instead.
Below are videos from ProQuest and EBSCOhost that walk you through searching their controlled vocabularies.
Harpring, Patricia. (2010). Introduction to Controlled Vocabularies: Terminology for Art, Architecture, and other Cultural Works. Getty Publications. https://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/intro_controlled_vocab/what.html
When you feel like you only have one resource that fits your research question, try looking at the bibliography of that resource. Often you can find other works closely related to your topic.
You can also look to see how many times that article has been cited by other scholars. Sometimes this is located directly in the library database.
Other times, it is more helpful to use an index, like Google Scholar, to look at how many times the resource has been cited by others.
