ENGL 100: Intro to Literary Study: Ireland (Reynolds)

Identifying Keywords

When you're using databases, you want to use keywords to search for materials related to your topic. To develop keywords for a search, think about the topics you want to explore - you might try searching a book title and some of the major themes within the work, or an author and reviews or commentary to see what other people think of their work. Lets say your project is about the book Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Here is a list of keywords I might use to find journal articles on that topic:

Pride and prejudice, Jane Austen, social commentary, society, economy, socioeconomics, romance, relationships, family, realism, satire, Elizabeth Bennet, Darcy, review, criticism, analysis.

You can search for these terms individually or try combining them for more refined results. Try using search terms like AND, OR or NOT.

If I use the terms "Pride and Prejudice" and "Jane Austen" and "criticism" I will get results that contain all of those search terms together.

(review OR criticism) and "Pride and Prejudice" will bring up results that include the book title as well as either review or criticism or both words together. 

Use NOT when you want to exclude a word or phrase.

Here are some general tips to guide you in choosing your search terms:

• Use concepts and other nouns as your keywords.  Think of words that are likely to be used in titles (or that you have seen in titles).
• Spend some time brainstorming keywords and search terms. Use the subject headings/tags in each database to help you think of search terms. For example, if you search for "Pride and Prejudice" and satire, the subject headings might also contain words like realism, social commentary, etc. 
• Use an asterisk * after the root of a word to find all forms of a word. For example, a search for review* will find sources that use not only the word review but also synonyms like critique or commentary.

Expanding on Existing Research

No piece of research stands alone; each is part of a broader scholarly conversation in that topic/ field. You can use a single article  or other resource to find other, similar research by tracing the paths of that conversation:

Keywords – Check the abstract, subject terms and full-text to discover the vocabulary being used in this particular scholarly conversation.

Subject Terms – Subject terms not only provide insight into vocabulary you should use but also serve as search tools – click on these tags in any database (or the catalog) to find more resources on a given topic.

Cited References – Check the references list (or bibliography) to see what previous research this resource is drawing on. From here, you may wish to consider: 

- Previous articles or books published on your topic
- Other authors who have published on your topic
- Journals where your topic is frequently discussed

Times Cited – Check Google Scholar to see which articles or books have cited your sources, and to find
more-recent research which builds on your original information.

** Once you find a new resource, you can also trace the scholarly conversation around that book/article to find even more resources! **