Not finding enough on your topic? Not finding anything on your topic? Are you using the best keywords and concepts to describe what you're looking for?
Brainstorming the different words and phrases used to describe your topic is one the most helpful things you can do to start your research. It gets you really thinking about your topic and the ways it can be approached.
If you're having trouble getting the storm started, try reading a few references articles or authoritative websites. Look for words or phrases that are repeated in the article and the different ways they are described there. Also check out the Reference List or Works Cited for more sources on topic.
Once you have a strong set of keywords and phrases to search on, use these search techniques to focus your database searches and maximize success.
You can utilize a number of advanced search features in Google to refine your results and get to better sources, faster. You enter site: into the search bar to limit to a specific site (such as nytimes.com) or domain (such as .edu). Similarly, you can also search for a specific type of file results. As an example, entering file:.pdf will only return PDF results, no websites. Quotation marks will force Google to search for words as a phrase. A minus sign in front of a word will remove it from the results. Also, you limit date ranges by enter a start year, two dots, and an end year without any spaces.
*Pro Tip: Some internet sources (cough Wikipedia cough) may not be appropriate to site in an academic paper, but they have have references, links, or additional readings that could be appropriate. Evaluation is extremely important on the internet, which can be a great place to start, but rarely where you will finish your research.
