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This library course guide is intended to help students hone their research design skills related to the writing of a thesis research proposal.
Formulating your question
- Write your topic out as a sentence or question
- Identify the main ideas (concepts)
- Think of synonyms for each concept
Need Help?
- SAGE Research Methods - use the Project Planner or Methods Map
- Developing strong research questions
Search Process
Searching academic literature is an iterative process
- Identify the main ideas or concepts
- Think of synonyms or related terms for each concept
- Combine the search terms
- Discover and select the database(s) you want to search
- Execute search
- Evaluate the results you find and revise your search strategy as necessary (and possibly your research question)
- Repeat
Searching Techniques
Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to combine concepts and enhance your search
- Use AND for cominbing different concepts, it narrows for fewer results
- Use OR for combining related terms or conecting synonyms, thus expanding your search
- Use NOT for eliminating irrelevant results, ie: cloning NOT sheep
Brackets to group synonyms together, ie: (lake OR river) AND (salmon OR salmonidae)
Phrase Searching - use quotation marks to search words together ie: "carbon sequestration"
Truncation - use the asterisk * at the end of a word to find possible word endings
- Example: pollut* oxygen*
Wildcards to broaden your search to include words with different spellings
- minerali?ation = mineralisation, mineralization
- wom#n = woman, women
- colo*r = colour, color
Note: Many databases now provide automatic truncation, seamlessly searching for alternate spellings. When this is the case, using your own truncation overrides the system. Try a search first, then use truncation if needed.
Combining searches using the search history
If you have an account, locate your search history on the database you are using. It is a list of all the searches you have carried out during that session. You can re-run any of the older searches or combine searches from your search history results.
Create a Research Account
Setting up a research account is simple and free on most databases. These accounts allow you to save documents, searches, and set up alerts.
There are many search tools and databases available. Start with the links below. Please remember to create an account when using each tool to maximize your searching experience.
- Omni - Omni Search Tips
- GEOBASE - GEOBASE 3 minute how-to video
- Scopus - How to conduct a basic search
- Web of Science Core collection - navigating search results
- Google Scholar
Library Databases tagged: Geography
Keywords
- Choose the most important keywords on your topic to find information
- For comprehensive searches, you will need to consider all possible ways of expressing your topic/idea
- Keep a keyword list (Excel file) when your are researching a topic. It will help you remember the words you have already tried, the combinations you have used, and any new words you noticed in your search results
Controlled Vocabulary
- Index or subject terms are specific words that have been assigned by a database to describe an article or book
- Most databases use searchable subject heading indexes or thesauri authority files
- Using controlled vocabularies will help determine which words/synonyms to use, or which word combinations to try
- Academic libraries in North America use the Library of Congress call numbers and classification system to catalogue books
Examples and videos:
- Omni - look for Subjects in the Detailed record of a book or article
- GEOBASE - under Search you will find the Thesaurus, or browse the Indexes for Controlled Terms
- Scopus - video for basic search
- EBSCOhost Subject Terms (YouTube video)
Citation Management
- learn to use a citation manager to collect, organize, annotate, cite and share your research
Zotero
The library also supports:
- Mendeley
- EndNote (free trial)
- Book an appointment with a member of the Citation Management team
Keeping Current
- creating research accounts on databases such as GEOBASE, Proquest, Ebscohost, Scopus and Web of Science Omni, and Google Alerts allows you to set up email alerts which will help you keep current with newly published articles
Find missing citations, track references and find related articles
Citing
- Citing your sources
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Recommended Resources
- APA Formatting and Style Guide from OWL Purdue
- Sample APA papers from OWL Purdue
- APA Style Citation Tutorial University of Alberta Library Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
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