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Manchester ENV 1010: Introduction to Environmental Science -- Michelle Vigue

Formulating a Search Strategy

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Student with laptop taking notes

Your search strategy begins by identifying keywords and phrases that define your search topic. Write down these keywords and phrases; you will be typing them into our subscription databases to find scholarly journal articles on your topic as well as our online catalog to find hard copy and electronic books.

For example, climate change, Alaska, rising temperatures, food supply, and local economy are keywords and phrases you can use to find articles and books.  To identify other key terms, refer to your "Global Change Activity Project" assignment.

To find the greatest number of articles on your topic, simply type the keyword in your search box.

To narrow down your search, you can use the connector "AND" to combine subject terms and key phrases and keywords:

climate change AND Alaska

Alaska AND rising temperatures AND economy

Or, you can simply type subject terms and keywords without the "AND" connector and your search will automatically include all search terms:

 

climate change Alaska temperatures economy

 

Advanced Searching

In the Advanced Searching feature you can specify where you want your key words to be found.  In this example, Alaska is in the Subject Terms field and rising tempreatures is in the All Text field.  Also, full-text articles have been requested as has Peer-Reviewed journals.  Searching with this specificity will allow for more effective and efficient results.