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ENGL 151 for Distance Learning: Search Strategies

Know What You're Looking For

What is the purpose of this paper? 

If you can't answer the above question, you need to go back and look at your assignment or ask your instructor. Your syllabus will also have course goals, and it may be helpful to review those goals when determining the purpose. From there, determine what kind of research paper you're writing. In this class, you will be writing 5 essays. Below are the types of essays you will be working on:

Informative

Write a brief introduction that defines the problem from the list of approved topics found in your syllabus. 

Rhetorical Analysis

Through this assignment, you will deepen your understanding of rhetorical strategies within the context of societal problems. Analyze an article that presents an argument or suggests a possible solution to your chosen issue. This essay should allow you to effectively persuade your audience using rhetorical appeals. 

Cause and Effect

This assignment will focus on the arguments and counterarguments of your chosen topic. 

Persuasive 

In this assignment, you will expand on your chosen topic, exploring and proposing comprehensive solutions, making a well-supported argument for your preferred solution. Consider the broader impacts, address potential counterarguments, and justify why your solution stands out as the most effective choice. 

Metacognition

This final assignment will allow you to reflect on your research process, learning achievements, and personal growth throughout the course. 

Keyword Searching

What are the most important words in your topic statement or thesis?

Searching databases or the OCC Library catalog isn't like searching Google or other search engines. Search engines use natural language searching. Natural language searching allows you to speak or type everyday language, sentences, or questions into the search bar to create a query. 

Keyword searching only requires you to isolate the most important concepts of your topic and search individual words, phrases, and their synonyms. In keyword searching, you seperate your words and phrases using boolean operators to produce more focused results. 

For example: 

Natural Word Search: What happened in the 1975 World Series?

Keyword Search: world series AND baseball AND 1975

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators are words and symbols that are used in conjunction with keywords to narrow or broaden search queries. Those boolean operators include: AND, OR, or NOT and the symbols quotation marks "", parenthesis (), and asterisk *.

AND:

  • Narrows search results
  • Tells the database to produce results that contain ALL of the search terms
  • For example: climate change AND factory farming

The area of the venn diagram where the star is located represents the results that include ALL of the search terms. Notice this area of the diagram is the narrowest part of the whole diagram.

OR:

  • Broadens search results
  • Tells the database that to produce results with ANY of those search terms
  • For example: alternative medicine OR natural remedies OR holistic medicine

Results for this query will include any of those search terms. This is a good strategy to use if you don't know what language, or jargon, to use to get an idea of what research is out there.

NOT:

  • Narrows search results
  • Excludes or ignores words and phrases from search results
  • A great way to differentiate phrases that sound similar but are very different or to ignore phrases and concepts
  • For example: men's students NOT male studies; psychology NOT adolescent 

In the below example, we want to know about Psychology, but NOT adolescent psychology. The results for this query will not include anything about adolescent psychology, but will include other types of psychology. 

Symbols:

Quotation Marks " " - By putting quotation marks around phrases you are telling the database to look for the whole phrase. This is helpful when searching phrases that contain common words that when separate do not pertain to your topic.

For example: Putting quotation marks around "skin cancer" will ensure that you are searching for skin cancer and will only produce results with that phrase. Otherwise, you will get results that include the keywords skin AND cancer, which may not include results for skin cancer. This is called phrase searching.

Parenthesis () - Parenthesis are used to enclose different search strategies in one query. The database will search what is in the parenthesis first and then apply the statements that are not enclosed. 

For example: (first world war OR great war) AND allies 

Asterisk * - By adding an asterisk to the end of a truncated, or shortened, word, you are actually searching all forms of that word. This helps to broaden your search. This technique is called truncation.

For example: 

  • music* = music/ musical/ musician/ musicality
  • child* = child/childs/children
  • advertis* = advertise/advertisement/advertising

BEWARE - Some words do not truncate well and you may get more results than you mean to.In this case, it is better to spell out what you are looking for and use the operator OR to broaden your search.

For example: mat* could include = mating, maternity, matrix, math, material, matriculating, matrimony. Instead search (mate OR mating OR pairing)