Six Top Tips For Successful
1. Know your topic--check
2. Identify main concepts--keywords, subjects
3. Create search strategy--find synonyms, eliminate extra words, combine
keywords with "and"
4.Choose the appropriate resources
5. Revamp your strategy after you see what kind of results your getting.
6. The Crucial Difference Between Internet Searching using a search engine
and using a subscription database of published articles. A web search
will only reach 13% of
the available electronic information. To reach the more scholarly, reliable
87% you need to use commercial databases such as EBSCOhost.
Key Points to Remember:
· Choose a topic that you are interested in.
· It is reassuring to know that almost everyone will have to change
and fine tune their topic during the research process.
· Use library tools such as CQ Researcher and Encyclopedias to
gain a foundation of knowledge and a baseline of understanding of the
key issues for your possible topic. After all, once you attain an overview
of aspects of a topic you might find you are interested in an area you
previously had no knowledge of.
The Challenge of Picking
It usually makes sense to start
with a broad or more general topic. It is human nature to be discouraged
if you start with too narrow a topic.
- Examples of Topics
Broad to Narrow
Smoking in America
Smoking by Age
Smoking By Gender
Smoking Health Risk
Types of Cancer Smoking Causes
Rights of Smokers vs. Rights of Smokers
Role of the Government
But if you find way too many
articles or books don’t feel overwhelmed. It is easy to narrow or
broaden your search by using a keyword search or using a subject search.
Keyword searching involves using
Boolean connectors such as
For wonderful charts and visuals
on boolean searching
look at this Library of Congress site.
Your Research Results
Focus on learning the process of writing and researching instead of only
the final product.
See OCC Plagiarism Brochure