1. Use AND to combine keywords and phrases when searching the electronic databases for journal articles. Try China and Film and History.

Unlike in Google and in other search engines, you will not get satisfactory results if you type an entire sentence, such as "the effect of advertising in mass media on teenage consumers." You need to pick out the key phrases, words, and concepts.

•  advertising and mass media and teenagers and consumers

If you type several words without AND in between, some of the article databases will assume you want only items where those words appear right next to each other, and in that exact order.

2. Use truncation (an asterisk) and wildcards (usually a question mark or exclamation point).

•  child* and education
•  globali?ation and analysis

Child* brings up child, children, childhood, and any other word that starts with the root "child." This works in most of the databases.

Globali?ation brings up items with the words globalization or globalisation.

If you don't use truncation and wildcards, some databases will look for an exact match to the words you type, and you may miss some relevant materials.

Warning: If you shorten the root word too much, you will bring up irrelevant items (soc* will bring up society and social and socioeconomic, but also Socrates).

3. Find out if the database you're using has a "subject search" option.

For some topics, subject searching "Art Criticism" works better than keyword searching, which is usually the default. 

This may bring up fewer results, but you'll be searching with more precision.

Use the results of a keyword search to discover subject headings (descriptors) used in the database. Usually, they will appear at the bottom of the article or somewhere in the citation. 

4. Use your imagination.

Think of all the possible ways to express your topic. Brainstorm until you've exhausted all possibilities. 

To get the best results, use the word OR inside parentheses.

•  try (television or movies or motion pictures)
•  (teen* or adolescen*) and (girl* or female) and aggression

5. Approach your research like a detective, looking for clues in all that you discover.

As you begin to find information, keep an eye out for the "big names" in your research area-for example, key people and organizations. Notice the names of people who are often quoted in the news; scholars who are doing research on your topic and the universities with which they are affiliated; activists and leaders working on a political or social issue; spokespersons and influential figures. Then, search for books and articles written by them. If a person has spoken at a conference, find out if the conference proceedings are available (on a web site, or in our library, or via interlibrary loan). Check the bibliographies and footnotes in the books and articles you come across, and see if our library holds the materials cited by them. Find out if there is a local or national organization related to your topic. See what information is available on its web site. You might contact the organization by phone or email to find out what information they provide to the public, and whether they have staff that can assist you in getting more information. 

6. When searching for books, use broader terms than when searching for articles.

Subjects and keywords for books usually describe what the whole book is about--the main topics, not every topic covered. In the article databases, the subjects will describe what the article or chapter of a book is about. This means you can sometimes do the "needle in a haystack" searches in the article databases. That kind of search rarely works as well in the library catalog.
7. Don't limit yourself to just one database or one set of search results.

Search a database that covers many subjects (e.g., Academic Search Premier or Scholar OneSearch) as well as a subject-specialized database. The same search phrase entered in two different databases may bring up very different results. If your topic encompasses more than one major subject area-business and art, for example- try searching both a business database and an art database. Ask at the reference desk for our recommendations. Try different phrases; try the same search across multiple databases. Don't be content with the results of one search.

8. And of course, ask a librarian if you have questions!

Don't spin your wheels and waste a lot of time if you get stuck or encounter something confusing. A librarian at the research assistance desk can save you time and help you find better information, more efficiently. For example, we can suggest the best databases for your topic. We can show you the most efficient way to search for articles by a particular author (HINT: usually not by keyword searching). We can advise you on search strategies and techniques tailored to your topic.

9. Use an extension like Zotero to keep track of your breadcrumbs.

Why Use Zotero? Zotero lives right where you work: your web browser—allowing you to quickly grab citations as you research, and then easily create correctly formatted bibliographies.

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a tool that helps you to collect, manage, and cite your references. Using Zotero you can attach PDFs, notes, and images to your citations, organize them into collections for different projects, and create bibliographies. Zotero automatically updates itself to work with new online sources and new bibliographic styles. Zotero was built and is supported by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.