An Introduction to Library Research

Thinking of key terms and related synonyms is integral to getting the most out of your search. There are a couple methods for doing this. You can make a mind map as shown below, you can create a spreadsheet with broader, narrower and related terms of your research question, etc. The key is to make sure you have a good amount of options for searching in case your original terms don't return the results you are looking for.

Graphic Courtesy of the Shapiro Library at SNHU. From their Keyword Searching Research Guide.

September, 2024

Picking Key Words

1. Use your research questions to pick out essential keywords: see the Venn Diagram on joining topics into a research focus.
2. Find related terms and synonyms for each concept in your research question. for example:

art museums 

• Cultural heritage

• Museums

• Galleries

Constructing Searches

Most search engines, including Educat+ and CLIO, use standard search language and symbols to convey searches:

1. Boolean operators connect your terms: AND connects different topics together, OR connects related terms within each topic, NOT removes that search term from results. See the example below.

2. Quotations: using quotation marks allows you to search for an exact phrase i.e. "Teachers College" instead of 'Teachers' and 'College'.

3. Parentheses: help group sets of terms to delineate relationships within the search.

4. Question mark: a question mark in a search has a similar function to an asterisk, but for only one letter i.e. 'wom?n' will capture woman and women.

5. Asterisks: adding an asterisk at the end of a word will capture related words with the same root or base, i.e. 'philosoph*' will capture philosophy, philosophical, philosopher etc.

Example Search

(“art museum*” OR museu* OR galler*) AND (hiring OR recruit*) AND (divers* OR DEAI OR DEI) AND (manage* OR executiv* OR leader*)

Lincoln School Of Teachers College. Summer Demonstration. Recreation Program. (1939). Historical Photographs of Teachers College. Courtesy of Gottesman Libraries.

Cited Reference Searching is a way to search in the literature that uses an article title or author name to find works cited within the publication as well as works that cite the central article. For a given relevant or central publication, cited references allow you to look backwards in time at reference list to find cited publications as well as look forward in time at publications that cite the central publication.

Cited Reference Searching is built directly into Educat+ with arrow buttons in the details of a given entry.

The result lists will show mostly other publications that are accessible through Educat+ and some may say “No Online Access”. For these, we recommend searching in CLIO to check for access.

Cited Reference Searching Tips

• There is no single authority on cited references - each database draws from its internal index.
• Google scholar has the most wide net, but may not be the most accurate.
• Search across different databases to cover your bases. Use cited reference searching as a breadcrumbs technique to trace back where a concept or theory started.
• Use cited reference searching as a way to stay up to date with scholarly conversations.
• If you can’t find the full text of an article you have discovered through cited reference searching, check Educat+ and CLIO first, and then make an Interlibrary Loan Request

Other Databases for Cited Reference Searching