One of the greatest challenges in starting a new research project is deciding which search terms best describe your topic as you begin the search for resources. Try to be really succinct/to the point and use just a couple of keywords instead of typing long sentences. The video explains all of this quickly (less than 2 minutes!), so please watch it now. Here are few more tips where I use some of the words and phrases I learned about in the newspaper articles I shared with you during our live session:
- Enter keywords that represent your topic:
- Limit searches to two or three keywords: independent gas stations
- Don't search with sentences, questions, or long phrases.
- Combine terms with OR to broaden:
oil refinery OR petroleum refinery (these would find either items)
- Combine terms with AND to narrow: California AND gas blends (this would only find items with both these phrases)
- Place quotation marks around words you wish to be searched as a phrase: "gas tax"
