Keyword Searching
When searching in a database, you will want to use keywords not full sentences or questions. Additionally, databases will not generate synonyms. This means that a database wouldn't connect that U.S.A and America may very likely be talking about the same location. You have to provide these terms to the database which sometimes means creative thinking to generate new keywords to try. You can generate keywords from your research question or thesis statement. For example:
My research topic is:
The history of education reform in elementary schools in the United States
Some keywords I might try could include:
- Education Reform
- Elementary education reform
- k-12 education reform
- Education policy
- United States OR U.S.A. OR America
I can then use Boolean searching to help use these search terms together.
Quotations
If I am searching education reform, the database will recognize these as two separate keywords, education and reform. Those two keywords searched separately won't necessarily provide me with information about education reform. I will get results just about education and not about reform, or results just about reform but not about education.
When I am searching a phrase like this, I can encase the phrase within quotation marks: "education reform". This tells the database that I want the text to appear exactly as I have typed it between the quotation marks. The exact spelling, punctuation, etc. This can be a useful tool for dealing with phrase keywords or for keywords with unusual spellings.
Browser Link, Permalink, DOI
When talking about saving a resource, there are three links we will encounter.
The browser link, will be found in the search bar of your web browser. DO NOT SAVE THIS LINK. This link times out after 30-40 minutes and the page that you will be brought back to gives you no information about the resource you were originally looking at.
The Permalink, sometimes called the Permanent Link or the Remote Access URL, gives you stable access to the resource through whichever database you were using. For example, If I am looking at an article in OneSearch and save the Permalink, when I select the Permalink at a later date I will be brought back to the article in OneSearch. The Permalink can be located in different places depending on which database you are using. In OneSearch and other EBSCO databases, it can be found in the right side tools bar under the chain-link icon. You can copy this link for access at a later date.
DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier, this is the third type of link you will encounter when trying to save resources.