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First Year Seminar

Library Information for new students

EBSCO Discovery Service

Use EBSCO Discovery Service  to search all of the Library's databases at once.

  1. Enter keywords in the search box
  2. After you press 'search', use filters to refine results to include journal articles, full-text, and, if desired, scholarly/peer-reviewed
  3. Click on the title to access the full text, if available.

 

Developing Keywords

Keywords are the building blocks of research. However, finding ones that produce the kind of search results that you are looking for can be tricky. These questions can be helpful to think through these questions when developing keywords:

  1. What are the important nouns in your research question?
  2. What are synonyms for those important nouns? How might different groups refer to your topic?
  3. Who are the key figures/ what are the key events that you learned about during your research with reference sources?

Like the research process, developing keywords is an iterative process, so don't panic if your first keywords don't produce the results that you were expecting.

Below are some resources from other libraries with further tips for developing keywords

Google and Google Scholar Search Tips