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Quinebaug Valley Campus Library

Quinebaug Valley at Willimantic Center

Using Keywords to Search a Database

Keywords or key phrases are words that describe the most important parts of your research. They can be used to help you identify useful resources in library catalogs or databases. Identifying strong keywords is important for quickly and effectively finding sources that you can use to support your research. 

You can think of them like a key! Choosing the right keys will open the right doors without you needing to look through every open room. 

Why use Keywords?

Public search engines are designed to try and predict what resources you want. If you type in "bird in Connecticut" search engines may also give you results on "wildlife in Connecticut" or "birds in New England." Sometimes this is helpful, but other times it make it difficult to find the information you're actually looking for among the thousands of results. For example, you search results for "bird in Connecticut" may also point you to a café in Connecticut called the "Early Bird." This is because the search engine is looking for appearances of the word, or something similar, anywhere on the page. 

Libraries and research databases use keywords to help organize the thousands of resources we make available to our users. When a new book or article gets added to a database, librarians assign various keywords to it based on its subject and content. Think of this like what we do when we assign hashtags to our social media.  This means that when you search in a library database the system won't generate synonyms or try to make predictions about what you want. Creating strong keywords takes practice, but it also gives you more control over what resources you find. 

Choosing and Creating Strong Keywords

Choosing strong keywords is critical to getting your research off the ground and in the right direction. Different people will have different ways of choosing keywords, but we recommend trying the strategies below.

We'll use this research topic as an example: the effects of smartphone use on sleep quality. 

  • Identify keywords in your topic or assignment. 

Our research topic is "the effects of smartphone use on sleep quality." If we look at the main ideas in this topic there are already several keywords we could use: effects, smartphones, sleep quality, and use.

  • Combine keywords into key phrases.

If we were to search "effects of smartphone use on sleep quality" the database would search each one of those words as a separate keyword. But, for our research, it's important that we're looking at resources that talk about the quality of sleep, not the quality of the smartphone. To combine keywords, we can use double quotation marks. This will tell the database to search for these words as a phrase, rather than as separate words. For example: effects of smartphone use on "sleep quality." Remember that this strategy will only look this this exact phrase, if you misspell the terms or wanted to look for a plural the search will not find that term.

  • Use synonyms or similar phrases 

Researchers may use different words to describe the same thing. For example, one author may write about smartphones, while another may use the term cellphones. When you have identified your first few keywords, make a list of possible synonyms or similar phrases to make your searching even more likely to collect all the relevant resources. 

  • Go broad / Go narrow

You may find that your first keywords do not give you enough resources - or that they give you way too many. Don't be discouraged! This is where it is helpful to use keywords that are broader or narrower than your original idea. For example:

Combining Keywords into Key Phrases

You can combine keywords to make key phrases by using double quotation marks at the beginning and end of your key phrase. For example:

Keywords: women, detectives

Search: women detectives

This will return all results related to women, detectives, and women detectives.

Key phrase: "women detectives"

Search: "women detectives"

This will only return results where the phrase "women detectives" appears.

Combining keywords into key phrases where appropriate can make your search results more relevant to your research needs. This is particularly useful when your topic can also be an acronym: AI or "artificial intelligence, TBI or "traumatic brain injury", etc. Using key phrases to search will make sure that the words artificial and intelligence or women and detectives appear in the source next to each other and not in different sentences, paragraphs, or pages.

Putting It All Together

By adding OR between keywords or using the drop down box to the left, the database will search for sources that contain either word. This allows us to use multiple synonyms in the same search. Like using the hashtags dogs and cats when looking for cute pet videos.

 

By adding AND between keywords or using the drop down box to the left, the database will search for sources where both words appear. The allows us to narrow our search down using multiple keywords together. Like using the hashtags dogs and beagles when looking for cute beagle videos.

 

Remember to keep it simple.  Only use one or two keywords at a time in your search.  If you do not get the results you are looking for, trying using different keywords or similar words, not adding more keywords to your search.

Use our Understanding Keywords Handout to practice and create keywords for your research assignments.