Developing a search strategy

It's important to develop an effective search strategy before starting to search.  Knowing ahead of time what terms you will use in doing your searching will make your searching more effective and efficient. 

Developing a search strategy involves defining your topic as a sentence or question, identifying the major concepts or key words that make up your topic, and determining the relationship between the keywords and concepts.

Most online catalogs and databases cannot understand complex sentences or questions, so it helps to create a list of keywords for searching purposes.  These keywords are usually the main concepts of your topic or thesis statement.  You should also think about additional terms to use when searching.  Remember to include plurals, synonyms (similar terms), variant spellings (for example, British vs. American spellings), and related terms; this can improve your results and pick up things you might otherwise miss.

Example:

Topic: What is the impact of NAFTA on Mexican income distribution?
Key concepts: nafta, mexico, income distribution
Synonyms and alternate terms: north american free trade agreement, free trade; mexican, mexicans; income, income gap, wages, salaries

Using subject headings

If given the option, consider using subject headings to search for items on a broad topic.  Subject headings (sometimes called descriptors) are terms which have been designated within a particular system to represent certain concepts (for example, in the Yellow Pages, "cabs" are called "taxicabs.")  Subject headings are assigned to books and articles by information professionals who have evaluated the items and decided what the subjects of the item are.  Some databases provide a list of subject headings from which you can choose search terms.  This type of list is usually called a thesaurus.

Combining terms: and, or, not

Once you have your list of terms or subject headings, you'll need to know how to combine them.  Most systems will allow for "combining" words such as and, or, and not; these are also known as Boolean searches or combination searches.

• AND finds materials that contain both or all of the words or phrases that you include.  Use AND when you want to narrow your topic, to be more specific.
    nafta AND mexico
    minnesota AND wisconsin
  
• OR finds materials that contain at least one word or phrase and sometimes both (or all.)  Use OR when you want to broaden your topic, or include possible variations.
    income OR wages OR salaries
    ernie OR bert
  
• NOT finds materials that exclude one word or phrase.  Use it to exclude any unwanted words or phrases (but be careful; you might omit something useful.)
    free trade NOT china
    job NOT bible

• See the NYU-Bobst Library's interactive Boolean Search tutorial for more.
  

See also:

Choosing the right sources
Subject vs. keyword searching
Refining your search strategy

To summarize:

List keywords that describe your topic, and group similar ideas together.
Use appropriate subject headings or descriptors when possible.
Use AND, OR, and NOT to combine terms as needed.

Next step: Finding books