introduction to library research

a topic for a research paper is usually a statement or a subject, eg. "discuss the causes of world war i" or "how does divorce affect young children?" both these topics are quite broad, and so one strategy is to start a list of key concepts and terms. in the first instance, "causes' and "world war i" are the keywords. in the second example, divorce, children, effects are some keywords.

remember, good sources for keywords are your textbook, and any books or articles you do find (some of the articles may list keywords right before the start of the article, write these down).

keywords can be broad (for example "war") or narrow ("battle of vimy ridge"). what do you do if you cannot find sources on your exact topic? well, if you use a narrower term, you may find fewer books but more journal articles.  however,a book may still be useful since a book on world war one, might have chapters dealing with vimy ridge, so, taking out books on the broader subject is a good strategy. look at the table of contents or scan the index at the back of the book on a broad topic to see if your narrower topic is mentioned.

journal articles on the other hand, are usually better suited to narrower topics. this is where your list of keywords comes in handy, and combining your keywords with boolean operators (and, or, not, see below video for a short explanation) will retrieve relevant results.

searching with boolean operators (from western university)