Search Strategy
Here is a good, basic formula for getting started with your research:
- Begin by narrowing down your topic and developing an initial research question.
- Use the keyword brainstorming worksheet to help you tweak your research question, identify keywords and related terms, and keep track of what you find.
- Search in a library catalog (Summon, OBIS, OhioLINK and/or WorldCat) to find books and reference sources. These sources will:
- provide BACKGROUND and CONTEXT
- REVIEW and SUMMARIZE earlier work
- help you FOCUS your topic and
- provide CITATIONS to important books, journal articles, conference papers, interviews, etc.
- Next, search research databases to find articles. The library has hundreds of databases; those listed on this guide are good places to begin.
- You may also wish to use Google Scholar to search the Internet. This is a great tool for doing cited reference searches.
Annotated bibliography resources
- Annotated bibliography tip sheetThis sheet helps you to understand what an annotated bibliography is, explains your job as a researcher as your compile it, and gives some helpful questions to consider along the way.
- Annotated bibliography worksheetThis worksheet is designed to help you ask and answer questions as you're reading each document that you're considering. It also gives you some practice distilling that information down into a brief summary.
Basic Database Search Techniques
| Concept | Explanation | Example |
| Phrase search (quotes required) |
search for an exact phrase (most, but not all, databases use quotation marks) | “death penalty” “standardized test” “reality TV” |
| Boolean logic (for keyword searching) | use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) for more precise searching |
See following examples |
| AND | search for records that have all of the words (narrows the search) |
race and poverty drug use and educational attainment |
| OR | search for records that have any of the words (broadens the search) |
homosexual or gay or lesbian or queer china or japan or korea |
| NOT | exclude records that have the word (narrows the search) | advertising not (TV or television) |
| Truncation | search for a root word with any ending (most, but not all, databases use an asterisk *) | adolescen* [finds adolescent, adolescents, adolescence] |
Additional Database Techniques
| Concept | Definition | Example |
| Complex Boolean Search | place search words for the same concept in the same search box (or in parentheses) |
(spous* or wife or wives or husband* or domestic partner*) and (abus* or batter* or violen*) |
| Proximity | require words to appear within a certain distance of each other n (for “near”) = words can appear in any order w (for “within”) = words must appear in specified order | poverty n4 mental health african w2 american* (n# and w# indicate the maximum number of intervening words) note: if no quotes or proximity connectors or are used, Ebsco defaults to w5 |
| Field qualification (field limiting) | require words to appear in a certain field in the database record (easy way: use dropdown menus) |
au coleman (for author field) ti racial profiling (for title field) |
| Limit (filter) | restrict search results to a subset of the database | e.g., by language, year of publication, type of publication |
| Add to folder | select or save records from search results for future action | save specified records to display, print, email, or add to bibliographic manager (e.g., RefWorks) later |
Research Help & Services
- Ask a LibrarianChat with us online or schedule a research appointment.
- Research AppointmentsSign up for a 30 minute one-on-one consultation with a librarian.
- Interlibrary Loan (aka ILL)Get scans of articles from journals and chapters from books AT or Oberlin or beyond.
Also, borrow books, videos, scores, etc. from libraries outside of the OhioLINK system.
