Introduction
Whether you're using Google, Wikipedia, the library catalog, or a specialized article database, keywords are really important. Keywords are how you tell the computer what you want, so that it can give you good results. The steps to writing keywords include:
Goals
By the end of this module, you should be able to generate a list of keywords to help you find material for your topic.
Direct link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZk76SmTBt0
Direct link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY39ynWAMMc
Narrowing a search
Sometimes your keywords are too broad, and you find too much material. For example, if I search for the keyword "basketball" in the library catalog, I get 17,787 books. That's too much! I need to be more specific.
There are two ways to narrow a search. One is to generate more specific keywords. For instance, "NBA" is more specific than "basketball."
Another way to narrow is to add a second concept. We do this using the word AND (because many databases will otherwise presume that you want to search as a phrase, such as "National Basketball Association," which is really a single concept). I can think of lots of ways to do this with basketball, for instance:
Broadening your search
Other times your keywords are too narrow, and you can't find anything. For instance, if I type "Boise and high school and basketball" into the Library catalog, I only get one item. I need to broaden my search.
There are two ways to make your search more broad. The first is to remove concepts. For instance, I could try "high school and basketball" or "Boise and basketball."
Another way to broaden a search is to generate broader keywords. "Sports" is broader than "basketball," for instance, and "Idaho" is broader than "Boise."
Direct link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsm6AkAuvTw