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 Selecting a topic – consider the product (audience)
 Fulfills the assignment
 Can be focused to fit the assignment (length, time)
Selecting a Topic and
Using Search Techniques
 10,000 Ideas for Term Papers, Projects, Reports, and
Speeches: Intriguing, Original Research Topics for
Every Student’s Need
 Kept at Library Reference Desk
 Current Issues
 Reference HN 59.2 .C87 2003
 Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics
 Has produced enough academic information to support
the assignment
 Can be written about objectively
 Something you can develop an interest in
 Step 1: Clearly stating the need for information
 Step 2: Formulating a research question or series of
questions based on that need
 Formulating the research question
 Defines the topic
 Identifies main concepts
 Helps narrow or broaden the topic
 Reference BJ 63 .E44 1998
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 The topic can be developed further as you do your
research
 Start with a very broad topic
 Do an information scan to find potential topics
 Example: psychology
 Narrow to the first level of specificity
 post-traumatic stress disorder
 Step 3: Sometimes it is necessary to narrow the topic further in
order to meet the goals of the assignment.
 It also can be helpful at times to broaden the topic if you have started
out with something very narrow and are not finding enough
information.
 However, you may need to
 clarify the question by narrowing the focus or broadening the scope
 revise the search strategy to include different search terms or additional
resources
 refine the original question
 be willing to adapt the question to fit the information available
 … in College Research
 When you can select your own topic, don’t fixate on a specific topic until you
have gathered your information. Allow yourself to adapt.
 Be willing to adapt the topic based on the information you find!
 Revising the topic to narrow or broaden the scope is NOT dropping a topic
and starting over. Don’t waste the time and effort you’ve expended on a
topic.
 Check with your instructor or a librarian before you throw away the time
and effort – the cost – that you’ve invested.
 The grass does always look greener, like grandmothers say. Just because
another topic looks inviting doesn’t mean it will take any less effort and time to
fulfill the research process.
 Further narrow the topic Post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) as you find information
 Subject encyclopedia
 From an article in Sage Reference Online, we can
learn a bit about this topic
 PTSD commonly associated with war veterans,
but there are other really interesting topics
 Before abandoning a topic, reevaluate your original question, and seek advice
from an expert. You may be closer to completing your research than you think!
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 Terrorism and PTSD (geographic region)
 PTSD and natural disasters
 Effect in first responders (specific population)
 Treatments for PTSD induced by terrorism vs. treatment
for PTSD which developed after being a victim of natural
disaster (compare / contrast)
 Relationship between events shown on television
produce PTSD (specific discipline)
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 What post-traumatic effects have been recorded in
children born between 1995 and 2000 who lived near
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks?
 Develop a list of keywords for your topic
 post-traumatic stress disorder
 How many children were impacted?
 terrorism
 What factors impacted development? (physical or
familial proximity to disaster, previous exposure to
trauma, parental mental health, etc.)
 children
 treatment
 Does treatment for terrorism-induced PTSD differ
from other types of PTSD, particularly PTSD induced
by natural disasters?
 Now, develop equivalent terms for the keywords
 Equivalent terms: words that serve the same purpose
in the search, maybe synonyms
 Terrorism
 In other words, what other word might be used?
 Post-traumatic stress disorder
 PTSD
 psychological trauma
 Violence
 Abuse
 Natural disasters
(These are not synonyms, but they may help us find
relevant sources about PTSD)
 psychological disorder
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 Treatment
 Therapy
 Medication
(Obviously, these are not synonyms, but are equivalent
terms for the purposes of this search.
 Children
 Kid
 Preschooler
 A database is a collection of information that has
been systematically organized
 One method of organizing information includes using
controlled vocabulary
 Controlled vocabulary refers to terminology selected
for use in a specific database
 Many systems of controlled vocabulary
 Many databases have their own lists
 Can be called subjects, thesaurus, descriptors,
subjects headings, etc.
 Do thesaurus searches for Post-traumatic stress disorder
in a database under Article Databases > Alphabetical List
 PsychINFO
 Post-traumatic stress disorder
 No hyphen! posttraumatic stress disorder
 A lesser condition is stress reactions
 Also refers to acute stress disorder
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 Also, to accommodate alternative terms, change
post-traumatic stress disorder to separate items
 Post-traumatic
 Posttraumatic
 stress disorders
 PTSD
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 Keyword searching
 Keyword searches look for the entered terms anywhere
in the item, often including the full-text if available
 Will return some irrelevant results as well as results
that are not really “about” your topic but just mention it
 Some keyword searches can be limited to certain items
 Keyword subject search will look for a term anywhere
in the subject headings for the item
 Browse (Alphabetical)
 Works like the phone book
 Goes through a specific item, letter by letter in order
 We’ve done several browse searches in this class
 Browse (alphabetical) searching
 Determine appropriate terminology
 Find a specific author, title, or subject
 Browse Searching
 Can be helpful in determine terminology
 Useful when you have an exact author, title, or subject
 Keyword searching
 Not as precise, but gets more results – look everywhere!
 Many specialized techniques can be used with keyword
searching that will not work in browse (alphabetical)
searches.
 We’ve already covered some search techniques (1-3 were
included in Module 5)
1. Eliminating unneeded and common words
2. Capitalization – doesn’t matter for keywords!
3. “Phrase searching”
4. Equivalent terms
5. Controlled vocabulary
 The quiz for this module may include questions about
these search techniques as well, so review if you need
to!
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 We’re going to cover three additional search
techniques
 Truncation
 Logical Operators
And
Or
Not
 Nesting
 Truncation is a technique of cutting a word off and
using a symbol to stand for all the possible endings of
that word
 Example: a search for the term pollution may be too
limited. Why not try truncation so you can get all forms
of the word pollution?
 Some databases use different truncation symbols, but
the asterisk ( * ) is common
 Pollut* = pollute, pollution, polluted, pollutant, polluter,
pollutive, etc.
 Great for singular and plural nouns as well as verb
forms!
 In most databases, searching “stress disorders” will
bring up just that exact term “stress disorders”
 But what if the term used was “stress disorder” (no
plural)?
 Google does word stemming, but many databases do
not so they can preserve the specificity of the search
 What to do?
 Truncation!
 Logical operators are connectors that establish the relationships
between search terms.
 Also called Boolean operators, after George Boole, a nineteenth century
English mathematician considered the founder of logical algebra
 Most common logical operators are
 And
 Or
 Not
 A note about capitalizing logical operators:
 Operators are capitalized for clarity in the modules, but capitalization
is not required in any DSC database
 Some search engines require capitalization of logical operators
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 Example: cats and diet
 Requires both terms to appear in all results, anywhere
in the item, in any order
 Best used with unlike terms – keywords with different
meanings (house and home doesn’t work well)
 AND narrows a search because it produces fewer results
that the term searched alone
 If you are retrieving too many records or the results
are too broad, add a new search term connected with
AND
 Example: drug abuse and teenagers
 Using the logical operator AND to connect additional
but unlike search terms is the most effective method
of narrowing search results
 Can keep adding unlike terms connected by AND
 Example: cats and diet and protein
 Results will contain both the term drug abuse and
the term teenagers
 Example: pencils or pens
 Requires at least ONE of the terms to appear in all
results; any of the terms, anywhere in the item, in any
order
 If you are not getting enough results or want to expand
the results, add an equivalent term
connected with OR
 Best used with similar terms (equivalent terms!)
house or home works well here!
 Example: crime or theft
 OR broadens a search because it produces more results
than any of the terms searched alone
 Use the logical operator OR to connect additional, similar
terms to give the databases choices!
 Can keep adding equivalent terms connected by OR
 Results will include either the term crime or the term
theft – or both terms!
 Example: pencils or pens or markers
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 If you are retrieving too many records on an unrelated
topic, try eliminating a word by using NOT
 Example: trees not pines
 Requires the second term not to be present in any of the
results
 NOT is the minus sign ( - ) in Google
 NOT narrows a search, but it can be dangerous.
 Only use NOT when irrelevant items are cluttering the
results
 Can eliminate relevant results!
 Example:
depression not economic
 What if the result was about your topic and only mentioned
the second word?
 Adding unlike terms connect by AND is a much more
efficient method of limiting search results
 Results must contain the term depression and must not
contain the term economic
 Going back to our equivalent terms, here’s how we would
connect them with logical operators:
post-traumatic OR posttraumatic or PTSD
AND
terrorism OR natural disaster
AND
children
AND
 The problem is that databases search things in order
 We need to group these terms so our search makes
sense
 Grouping is called nesting in databases
 Nesting is using parentheses (
a search
) to group terms in
treatment OR therapy OR medication
 We could add NOT veteran if we found too many results
about war veterans
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 The 5 rules of nesting:
1. If only one logical operator is used, no nesting is needed.
Example: pens or pencils or markers
2. If both the logical operators AND and OR are used, then
nesting should be used to clarify your search.
(pens or pencils or markers) and children
In our example,
3. The logical operator AND is outside the parentheses
4. The logical operator OR is within the parentheses
Example: pens or pencils or markers and children
5. The logical operator OR must connect equivalent terms
Must be formatted using nesting:
NOTE: Rules 3 – 5 sometimes do not apply to extremely
advanced search statements, but for this class (and
probably all the searching you’ll ever need to do), these
rules work!
(pens or pencils or markers) and children
 Putting the search statement together means using all
the techniques we’ve learned:
 Keywords
 Phrase searching
 Equivalent terms
 Controlled vocabulary
(post-traumatic OR posttraumatic OR PTSD)
AND
(terroris* OR “natural disaster*”)
AND
 Truncation
child*
 Logical operators
AND
 Nesting
(treatment* OR therap* OR medicat*)
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 You’re now ready to take Quiz 6.
(post-traumatic OR posttraumatic OR
PTSD) AND (terroris* OR natural
disaster*) AND child* AND
(treatment* OR therap* OR medicat*)
 It’s located in Module 6. Although the quiz is open
book, remember that the Final Exam is not, so you’ll
need to actually be learning the content not just
filling in the bubbles.
 If you have any questions or run into any problems,
please let us know.
 This class is much easier for students who work
quickly through the modules. Don’t be afraid to work
ahead and get the entire class done!
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