Study Successfully - Starting your research

Searching databases


Step 1: Analyse your topic for its main concepts

For example, your question is:

"""Discuss the impact of global warming on Australia's water supply."

The main concepts are global warming, water supply, and Australia

Find out more about Topic analysis in Module 4, Academic writing.


""Online search tips:
  • avoid using general terms such as impact, characteristics, influence, etc. as they are generally implied in the main concepts of the question
  • keep your search simple
  • check the database's Help for search suggestions. Each database is slightly different

    • Step 2: Decide on the keywords you will use as search terms

    For this topic there are three concepts so your keywords or phrases could include:

    ""Concept 1: global warming, climate change, climatic change
    ""Concept 2: rainfall, water, drought
    ""Concept 3: Australia, Australasia

     

    Step 3: Use Boolean logic when you are searching

    The Boolean operators, AND, OR and NOT, have special functions when they are used between search terms.

    Your database search could be typed like this:

    ""Climate change and water and Australia

    or, for even more references:

    ""(climat* change or global warming ) and (water or drought or ""rainfall) and Austral*

    Note: * is a truncation symbol that will search for everything starting with climat* including: climate, climatic

    Read more about Boolean searching and using truncation in the following guide Using boolean operators (pdf).

    Helpful hints for database searching more

    close

    Helpful hints for database searching

    Was your search unsuccessful?

    • is your spelling correct? British and American spelling is different: e.g. a Boolean search for colour OR color will find both search terms. See Module 3 of this tutorial,
      Finding items on a reading list.
    • are you using the most appropriate database for your topic? Librarians can help you
    • are you just typing in your essay question? Always use keywords, with AND or OR as linking terms
    • did you narrow your search too much? Use less terms in your search

    Were the articles you found not on your topic?

    • did you use OR when you should have used AND? e.g.
      ""greenhouse effect or australia
      instead of
      ""greenhouse effect and australia
    • are your terms too broad? e.g. transport rather than railways
      Begin with specific terms and broaden them if you need to
    • use the database's thesaurus or index. These list the subject headings used by the database to categorise articles.
      An education database might use more than one term to describe the same thing, e.g.
      ""higher education,
      ""tertiary education       or
      ""post-secondary education
      ""are all alternative terms for university education.
      A database from America might use terms differently to an Australian database, e.g.
      ""college instead of university

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