Searching Skills

Focusing on a Topic

Selecting Search Terms

Constructing a Search Strategy

Suggestions to Improve Search Results

Focus on a Topic

At this point you have chosen a topic. Additionally, you have reviewed general information sources to learn about basic topic concepts and terminology.

You want to achieve a manageable focus so that the research project does not overwhelm you. If your topic is too broad, you will want to narrow it. For example, the topic "pollution and its effect on fish" is too broad. You may narrow the topic to "pollution and its effect on salmon."

Conversely, if a topic is too narrow, you may not find the information needed in time to complete the assignment. For example, "oil pollution and its effect on North Atlantic salmon" may result in too few sources to use. Again, broadening the topic to "pollution and its effect on salmon" would likely provide an adequate number of results from a variety of information types and formats.

In addition to thinking about the topic and doing the background reading, you want to begin to identify the key concepts of the topics by listing the terms that may be useful for searching for information on the topic, such as synonyms.