Get started
Before you start searching for information take some time to plan. It can save you time and find more relevant information, first:
1. Understand your topic and task
2. Identify main research concepts and alternative terms
3. Connect research concepts to form a search strategy
The video below shows the full process.
Define
Use reference books such as handbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries or reliable websites to define terms, or find topic overviews, to become more familiar and locate better resources for your assessments.
Plan your search
You must have a broad understanding of your topic, before you can search for information or write your assignment. Consider:
What do you need to do?- What do you know? Or need to explore further?
- Do you need to define any terms?
- What types of evidence do you need?
- Does information need to be current?
- Do any theories apply to your topic?
- Do you need facts and figures, or statistics?
What do you need to do?
Example question: Discuss two of the government policies that have impacted on Aboriginal people's lives since colonisation?
The main concepts in your question form the foundation of your search:
- government policies
- Aboriginal
- colonisation
To avoid missing relevant resources think about synonyms or similar keywords for each concept:
- government policies: policy, Aborigines protection act, assimilation, integration, missions, stolen children; Aboriginal: Aborigine, indigenous; Colonisation: invasion, white settlement...
Also consider:
- Plurals, different word forms ( policy vs policies or mission vs missions)
- Different spellings (colonisation vs colonization), and hyphenated words (school classroom vs school-classroom)
- Acronyms or Abbreviations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission vs ATSIC)
Once you have your list of terms for each concept, you can combine them to create a search strategy.
First simplify your search. Use truncation, wildcards and phrases to cover word variations:
|
Truncation |
finds unlimited characters after the symbol must be used at the end of a word/wordstem |
mission* finds mission, missions, missionary etc... |
|
|
Wildcard |
finds zero or one character to replace the symbol can be used anywhere in a word |
coloni?ation finds colonisation, colonization |
|
|
Phrases |
keeps two or words together in the entered order |
"frontier violence" |
|
Now connect your remaining terms using AND, OR.
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Use OR to connect different terms within the same concept
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Use AND to connect each concept.
For example:
mission* AND (aborig? OR indigenous*)
Need more info? Check out our How to guides below.
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How to plan your searchUniSA Library PDF (446 kb)
Next Step
Now you have finalised your search strategy, you are ready to start finding resources. Click the image to learn how.
