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Hartness Library

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/ Guides & Help / Keywords & Search Strategies

Keywords & Search Strategies

Before you search for sources, brainstorm words and phrases that describe your topic. Remember to include synonyms (example: teenagers, adolescents, juveniles).  Identify the academic disciplines that are associated with your topic (e.g. gun control is associated with criminal justice, legal studies, social science). Using words that describe academic disciplines as search terms can be one way to improve your search results.

Using Scope: Broad vs. Narrow Search Terms
You may need to change the words you use to reflect the type of source you want to find. In general, broader or more general terms return broader more general sources, while more specific or technical terms return sources with a narrower scope, like journal articles or news stories. Below are some examples of different search strategies you would use to find a variety of sources on the same subject.

Words to Find Books Words to Find Articles
climate change “ice shelf” and “sea levels” and climate
early childhood education inclusion and autism and preschool
respiratory diseases chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and therapy
gun control “concealed carry” and laws and “United States”
Using Phrases
Library databases don’t use natural language to search, the same way some Web tools do. Rather than entering complete sentences into library search boxes, isolate the important words and phrases to use in your search. If you find phrases which are common to your topic (example: “global warming” or “No Child Left Behind”), surround the keywords in “quotation marks” to search for that exact phrase. This technique works with most Internet search engines too.
Using Subject Terms
The Library of Congress uses standardized terms to describe all subject areas. Many medical databases use the National Library of Medicine’s standardized terms, known as MeSH. Using these subject heading words to search can take some of the guesswork out of searching.

For example, if you search for the phrase “death penalty” in from the library homepage, you will find sources that are in the subject area of “capital punishment”, the standard term for sources about that topic.
subject terms

Using “capital punishment,” rather than “death penalty,” as a search term may produce more relevant results.

Using And/Or/Not: Boolean Searching
Library search tools use Boolean logic so that you can be very specific in how your words are used in a search. If you aren’t finding sources on your topic, try stringing together a series of words and phrases that are related.

Boolean examples

Library databases don’t automatically add the word AND to your search terms.  In a basic search, it’s always a good idea to use one or two narrow terms and one very broad term connected by the word AND to improve your search results (e.g. Thor and death and mythology). [The capitalization of AND isn’t necessary, it’s done here for emphasis.]

Using an Advanced Search
To combine terms (with AND) and use a string of synonyms (with OR), try using the advanced search from the library Use the Advanced Search link on the library homepage to easily combine multiple concepts or phrases when you search.
advanced search
An Advanced Search makes it easier to connect concepts and gives you Boolean (AND, OR, NOT) search options to choose from. The options to search by item title, author, subject term etc… are also more visible in this search.

advanced search

If you want to search throughout the text of articles, you can also select All Text from an advanced search.
all-text search