You may find sources in the Internet or in your university library's catalog, no matter where you look, always evaluate a source.
When looking for information, your first step is to find background information to have an overview of the topic. Background sources will connect you to essential terms associated with the subject matter, dates, names, and other information that will help refine your search. You can find background information in general and subject-specific encyclopedias, dictionaries, and even textbooks.
Boolean Operator | Example | What It Does |
AND | Immigration AND Italy AND film | Narrows your search |
OR | movie OR motion picture OR cinema | Broadens your search |
NOT | Italy AND film NOT food | Weeds out unhelpful stuff |
"Quotation Marks" | "Roberto Rossellini" | Searches an exact phrase, those words in that order |
* (Asterisk) |
Italia* (Will include possibilities like Italian, Italianism, italianismos |
Includes all possible word ending variations |
Keywords: The topic of your research will generate keywords and related terms.
Searching in databases uses similar logic to the one we used in the library's catalog OneSearch.
When doing research one of the initial steps is collecting terms that are related to your topic. Consider the terms below.
AND link words by AND to search for all words in the same resource
OR link words by OR to search for one word or another (instead of both/all words)
NOT to eliminate results with a certain term
“Quotations” – add quotations to a group of two or more words to search for the exact phrase
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