After you pick a topic for your paper, it is time to start doing research. Research involves finding a variety of sources on or about your topic. Finding sources means you have to search for them using web browsers, the library's catalog, or databases.
Keyword searching is using organic language to locate sources on your topic. Think of how you search in Google or other web browsers. This is searching using keywords. This is a perfectly acceptable way to search for information, but there are some other search techniques that are more targeted and can help you find better resources.
Title searching is looking for a specific book. It is best to put book titles into quotes to ensure the web browser, catalog, or database looks for exactly what you want; for example, "War and Peace" or "Oxford History of England". When searching for an exact title do not type in "the", "a", or "an" as books are not indexed under those articles but the second word of the title.
Author searching is looking for anything by a specific person. Invert the author's name: "Maxwell, Leona" or "Graham, Thomas". In the library world, we organize people by their last name, not their first name.
Subject searching is a targeted search to "resources about [fill in the blank]." Subject terms are official keywords for a person, place, event, and/or historical time period.
As you search, you will find that some words/terms bring back results while others do not. Keep a list of words or names you've used when searching. Mix and match different terms to find different sources. Use the Boolean operatives, "AND" "OR" "NOT" whenever advanced searching is an option and consider using the * wildcard when a word as multiple endings. To use the wildcard function, determine what the root of the word is, for example: history, historical, historian, would look like, histor*.
