College research often requires in-depth analysis of your topics. Enter keywords related to your topics into the databases below to find specific, detailed research and review articles.
Quotation Marks/Phrase Searching
Use quotation marks to search for a specific phrase, this narrows a search. Example: "serial killer"
Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT
And—narrows a search by inclusion. Example: "serial killer" and psychology
Or—expands a search. Example: "serial killer" or "serial murderer"
Not—narrows a search by exclusion. Example: "serial murderer" not "mass murderer"
Truncation
Truncation, usually using an asterisk*, increases the number of results you'll retrieve by searching for variant endings of a word root.
Example: kill* will find: kill, killed, killer, killing
Your search strategy will combine keywords related to your topic using the search techniques described above. Here are a couple examples:
1. "serial killer" or "serial murderer"
2. "serial kill*" and law
This search strategy is what you will type into the search box in a library database or Google to find sources about your topic.