Plan your search

Planning your search is key to getting the most relevant and high quality results. The following video will help you get started.

Video length: 2 min 26 sec

Key points from the video:

• Searching for your whole assignment is not very effective
• Identify the key concepts in your question or topic
• Think about what other words (similar words or alternative terms) might be used to describe the key concepts
• Connect your concepts using AND and OR
• You can change your search as you find more information

The rest of this page will outline the three key steps for planning your search as discussed in this video: identify keywords, consider alternative keywords, and connect your keywords.

Typing your question into Google or the Library Collection is not the best way to search.

Mapping out your search can be a good place to start:

• Identify the keywords (also known as key concepts) in the assignment question - these are the words which give meaning to the question, the main ideas
• Remove task words (also known as instruction words) from your assignment question - these are the words telling you what to do with the key concepts (e.g. analyse, compare, discuss)

Check out the guide below for more information on instruction words.

Test your knowledge

Can you find the keywords in the activities below? 

To cover the range of terminology used in the literature, you must also identify synonyms or similar keywords for each concept.

Also consider:

• Plurals, different word forms (architect vs architects vs architecture)
• Different spellings (labour vs labor),
• Hyphenated words (site-specific vs site specific)
• Acronyms or abbreviations  (18th-century vs eighteenth-century)

Try doing the following to help you understand your keywords and find similar or alternative keywords:

• Use your course readings, an encyclopedia, dictionary, or reliable websites to understand your topic
• Use a thesaurus to help you find similar or alternative keywords
• Do some basic initial searching using the keywords you've already identified to see what other words are used in the papers you find
• Create a mind map or table to help you brainstorm alternative keywords

Here is an example table:

This table is a sample only and not specific to your assessments.

Once you have identified your keywords and found alternative keywords, you need to connect these to put your search together.

You can use the following operator words, which many search tools have, to indicate how you want the tool to search for your keywords:

• OR: Combines similar keywords
• AND: Combines different keywords
• NOT: Excludes words from the search (use cautiously and only when necessary or you might exclude results you actually want)

Some more search tips:

• Remember to use "quotation marks" to keep phrases together
• Use parentheses to group keywords and their alternatives together, e.g. (artist OR artisan OR creator)
• Use truncation (the asterisk *) to search words with various endings e.g. landscap* = landscape, landscapes, landscaping etc.

An example search might be:

• architecture AND design
• design AND "interior architecture"
• architecture AND (environment OR landscap*)

This is what your search can look like in the library collection: 

Remember: Don't forget to refine your search as you continue to read and discover new and more relevant keywords. Your first search will not be your last.

Test your knowledge

Remember, searching is not a linear process. You may change your search as you discover more information.