Keyword Searching: Taking your best guess at the terms which will appear in articles on your topic can be an effective search strategy. However, you may get a number of irrelevant results. You also never know if you've found all the articles on your topic.
Descriptor Searching: Descriptors are the controlled vocabulary (or tags) used in a database to organize material. If you can find the right descriptors for your topic, you can focus your search on relevant articles and be sure that you've found everything on your topic.
Task | Why am I doing this? | More help |
Choose keywords or descriptors for your topic, to use as search terms. |
Developing an effective search strategy will help you get better quality results when searching the library catalogue, databases and the internet. |
Try using: |
Choose a relevant journal database to search for scientific articles on your topic. Visit the 'FInd articles: By topic' Library Search page to find tips on finding articles on your topic. | Journal articles provide the most current information. Searching a database is a great way to find articles on a specific topic. |
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