Website Search
Find information on spaces, staff, and services.
Find information on spaces, staff, and services.
Before you begin researching your project, you should spend some time exploring your topic.
Start by answering the simple questions: What? Who? When? Where? Why?
For example:
Let's summarize what you have so far. Here are you your potential search terms:
For instance, here is an example question:
Or, as a statement:
Now that you have a research topic, let's brainstorm some words with similar meanings (synonyms) to come up with additional search terms.
For instance, if your topic involves college students, you could also use terms like university students or undergraduates.
Great job on finding related terms for the subjects in your research topic. Now, let's move on to identifying alternative terms for what your topic is about.
For example, if your topic is stress, you might consider using words like anxiety or pressure as alternatives.
Excellent work, now let's find alternative terms or phrases for why you are researching your topic.
For example, if you're researching academic success, you might use terms like academic performance or grade point average (GPA) as alternatives.
Congratulations! You have successfully developed a research topic. If you are not satisfied with your statement, remember that you can edit the terms you entered in any of the previous steps.
Here is a summary of your search terms:.
Now that you've defined your research topic, you can begin searching in library databases. A library database is a searchable collection of scholarly information that you can use for research and study purposes.
The library offers access to numerous databases , but let's start with these:
Most databases will either have multiple search boxes, or a single search box. Here's how to enter your search terms for each type.