Honors Capstone Project - Bravo

When searching for articles in the library's databases and on the web it is important to identify relevant keywords and experiment with a variety of combinations. These are just a few keyword suggestions for researching your topic(s). What else can you come up with?  

Use the internet to conduct research. Here are some ideas about what you can look for online to help with your analysis. Don't forget to critically evaluate the sources you use.

• reports, news, and data from trade/professional associations, government websites, trade publications
• foster care organization websites: mission, services, programs, news/press releases, metrics
• company websites (look for the corporate or investor site): mission, values, annual reports, relevant CSR (corporate social responsibility) reports, news/press releases

The following databases contain articles from thousands of newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and trade publications. Don't restrict your search to just one database.

These databases are the best to use for local or regional newspaper coverage:

The library's databases have different search interfaces, but they share basic search principles. Some of these principles are listed below.

It is good practice to look for the [Advanced Search] option in each database that you use. The advanced search page will usually make it very clear as to how you can control your search using Boolean search techniques, limiters, field searching, etc.

Boolean Searching

Boolean searching is the cornerstone to an effective search strategy. Boolean searching refers to searching using a combination of words and the three Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT.  A best practice is to capitalize your Boolean Operators.

• AND will make your search smaller. If you are retrieving too many records on your topic, try adding another search term with the operator AND.

For example: "krispy kreme" AND marketing

• OR will make your search bigger. If you are retrieving too few records on your topic, try adding another search term with the operator OR.

For example: (adolescents OR teenagers)

• NOT will exclude a word from your search results. If you are retrieving too many records on an unrelated topic, try eliminating a word with the operator NOT.

For example: dolphins NOT football

Phrase Searching

To search for two or more words in the exact order in which they are entered you should enclose the phrase in quotation marks " ".

For example: "obsessive compulsive disorder"

Truncation

Truncation allows you to search the root form of a word with all its different endings by adding a symbol to the end of a word. Truncation symbols vary by database (check the help screens or ask a Librarian), but are usually one of the below:

* (asterisk)
! (exclamation point)
? (question mark)

For example: advertis* will search for advertise, advertisement, advertising, advertises

Field Searching & Limiters

Each database has a variety of predefined fields or limiters that you can search within. Some examples of fields and limiters are:

• article title
• article abstract
• article text
• author
• publication title
• date
• geographic location
• company name
• product name
• ticker symbol
• NAICS/SIC Codes
• document type
• publication type
• scholarly or peer-reviewed