African/African-American Studies  Tags: african_american african afa african_american_studies african_studies  

This is a work-in-progress; please do not hesitate to email me for research assistance, title recommendations, or suggestions on how to improve this research guide.

Link to our help page on citing sources.

You may also want to take the Academic Honesty tutorial and beef up on EKU's Academic Integrity policy.

Unlike the Web, where we can type in pretty much any search terms and get results, often of suspect quality - or even get suggested terms if we make a typo - databases require us to be more disciplined searchers.

What are Keywords?

Keywords are terms - words and phrases – used to search electronic databases, online catalogs, and the Web for information. To more easily identify keywords, frame your topic into a statement or question and then select the most important concepts. These are the terms you will use in your search.

            Ex: Does global warming result from natural causes?

Keywords allow you to construct an effective search statement in order to find articles and books directly relating to your topic.

Combine keywords with one or more of the following tools (which tell the database or search engine how to interpret your search statement)

Boolean Operators

            Ex. drugs AND athletes. Results will include both terms, not just drugs or athletes alone.

OR – includes any term.  Broadens search results.

            Ex.. colleges OR universities.  Useful when searching synonymous terms – saves having to do separate searches.

NOT – excludes terms.  Narrows search results.

            Ex. cirrhosis NOT alcohol. Will produce results about cirrhosis, but not alcohol-related cirrhosis.

Phrase Searching – use quotation marks to search your terms as a phrase.

            Ex. “undocumented workers” or “Sarah Palin” or “stem cell research”

Truncation – searches for a root word with varying endings.  Use the * or ? symbols, depending on the database.

            Ex.  diet* will result in: diet, diets, dieting, dietary, dietician, dieticians, etc.

Suggestion #1 I t’s most effective to keep your database search simple, using up to two or three keywords or phrases. Searching is a process. Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t successful at first; try new keyword combinations.

Suggestion #2  We can’t always know exactly how the author has chosen to express their concept – so always think of synonyms – terms that mean the same, or almost the same, thing.

            Ex:    HIV, AIDS, etc.    or    colleges, universities, etc.