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Criminal Justice Resources: How to Search

Keywords and Searching

Learn how to choose keywords and create targeted searches that you can use to find information ANYWHERE online, whether that be on Google, in the library databases, or in the library catalog.

Choose Keywords

keyword word cloud

After selecting a topic, the next step in finding sources for your literature review is coming up with keywords to use in your searches. Coming up with different keywords related to your topic is critical to your ability to find information on a topic. For example, if you are researching something about the death penalty, you may want to try searching for capital punishment as well.  Generally, databases (and even Google!) look for the words you provide and cannot make the same kinds of associations that the human brain can.

Try your hand at generating keywords for your topic at this link: https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/keywords/

 

Searching Tips

These search tips will help you whether you are looking in an online database or a library catalog.

Searching Databases by Yavapai College Library

Take some time to think of the best keywords to enter and be ready to change them as you pursue your topic.  Get ideas for new keywords by carefully examining the title and subject fields in your most promising results.

Try these search features:

  • Use Boolean search logic to combine keywords in order to narrow or expand your search (AND, OR, NOT)
    • AND: Use AND to narrow down your results, e.g. Augusta AND CSRA
    • OR: Use OR to expand your results, e.g. Augusta OR CSRA
    • NOT: Use NOT to eliminate words from appearing in your search results, e.g. Augusta NOT Maine
  • Use quotation marks to search for a phrase (If you type in strategic plan without quotations into a search engine, it will bring back any pages with the words strategic and plan in them. If you type "strategic plan" into a search engine, it knows to look for those words together as a phrase.
  • Use truncation (strateg* will find strategic, strategy, strategies, for example)
  • Use parentheses to direct the search engine to perform your search in a certain order. (If you type in (macaroni OR shells) AND cheese into a search engine, it will know to look for pages that have either the words macaroni and cheese or shells and cheese.

In most databases, you can also:

  • Search in full text and search by subject, title, and author.
  • Set search limits such as scholarly journals, full-text, or document type
  • Sort results by date or relevance
  • Look at suggested subjects to narrow your search