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SP211 Prof. Huggins: Searching for Articles in Databases

This guide will help students find topics for their informative speech projects. Students will learn about keyword searching in databases. Students will learn how to evaluate sources, to credibility.

Key Word Searching

Keyword searching is how you typically  begin your search in Google. Choose the most significant  words  or phrases that describe your topic and type them in to get results. You begin broad then narrow as you progress.

Key Points to Consider:

  • You are searching the description of your content
  • You create your keywords
  • What you see is what you get (WYSIWIG)
  • Must see keywords in reults 
  • check your spelling
  • appear where they appear without revealing context or meaning
  • the database looks for keywords anywhere in the record
  • use quotation marks  for words you would like to keep together such as "economic conditions"
  • may yield too many or too few results
  • may yield many irrelevant results

Practice Keyword Searching

How would you formulate a keyword search to get results in a database on the following:

  • global temperatures
  • history of hybrid cars
  • How does wearing a face mask help stop the spread of coronavirus?
  • How has the coronavirus brought about an economic crisis?
  • What social strategies can schools use to encourage empathy between kindergarten students of different cognitive/intellectual abilities?

Subject Heading/Term Searching

Each Database uses their own standardized tags or subject headings or subject terms, or thesaurus to identify topics. Subject heading, unlike keywords, do not have to appear in your results.

  • youth may be the subject heading for the keyword teenager in one database
  • adolescent may be used in another database for the keyword teenager.

 

Advantages of using subject headings or terms: subject terms are used not created.

  • they get at what the content is actually about rather than seeking out the words the data uses to describe the topic
  • gives results that are more precise
  • subject terms or thesaurus terms are assigned on the basis of what the record is actually about

How to identify subject headings ion a database:

  • first do a keyword search they find a record closest to your chosen topic
  • open up the citation portion of the record and search for the subject terms in that record
  • this is different for each database
  • at the top of some databases is the term SUBJECT TERMS or THESAURUS

Combining subject heading and keyword searching to narrow your search:

  • keywords can be used effectively to narrow within a subject area
  • use keywords if you don't know a subject term
  • the same words can be used as keywords or subject terms

Database Searching Tips and Combining Search Terms

  • Click on ADVANCED SEARCH
  • Click on NEWS
  • To view a newspaper article that is more than one paragraph long set you word count to greater than 1200
  • Use quotation marks around phrases or names so words appear next to each other "gun violence" 
  • Limit your search to FULL TEXT
  • Use AND to combine terms and  to narrow your results if too many results appear e.g. unemployment AND coronavirus
  • Use the word OR to find words that mean the same thing or to expand your search if too few results appear e.g. Teenager OR adolescent OR "young adult"