Use this online tutorial to help you understand the importance of evaluating the quality of the information sources you use in your academic work.
Before you start searching, spend some time defining your research topic. Ask yourself, what is it that you want to find out? What search terms or keywords will find this information?
Use whatever technique works best for you - e.g. brainstorming, words lists or mind maps etc. can help you think around your topic and identify all possible search concepts and terms.
Take a look at the short video to help you begin:
Once you have identified your keywords and synonyms, it is really useful to organise them by concept. This will enable you to combine your keywords and carry out complex searches in one go (see next tab).
You may find it useful to use a table or circle.
Let's imagine you are interested in finding information on systematic or constructive theology in both Eastern and Western Christianity. A typical search may look like this:
| Concept 1 | Concept 2 | Concept 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Eastern | Christianity | Systematic theology |
| Western | Constructive theology |
The keywords have been organised by concept. In this case we are focusing on the geographical coverage, specific religion, and religious approaches or disciplines.
The three most commonly used operators are AND, OR, NOT. These are known as Boolean operators. They can be used to broaden or narrow a search and to exclude unwanted concepts.
Watch the video to find out how to use these operators.
These techniques will improve the relevancy of your results by only returning results that match your instructions.
NOTE: the more keywords and advanced search techniques you use = the fewer results you return
Advanced search techniques
| Search tool | What does it do? | For example | What will it find? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Truncation * | Searches for all variant endings | West* | West, Western, Westernised etc. |
| Wildcards ? or $ | Searches for variant spellings | Civili?ation | Civilisation, Civilization |
| Quotation marks "..." | Searches for phrases | "constructive theology" | "constructive theology" as a phrase with these words in exactly this order - not constructive/theology as separate words |
| Brackets (..) | Allows you to build a comples search by grouping concepts | (Eastern OR Western) Christianity | (any one of the words within the brackets) + Christianity |
A typical search for information on systematic or constructive theology in both Eastern and Western Christianity may look like this:
More information on search techniques can be found on the Search Techniques Libguide.
University of Exeter LibGuide is licensed under CC BY 4.0
