Plan your Search

• Use the 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 mindmap or table to help you brainstorm alternative keywords. 

Watch the video below for AI tips for keywords and summaries:

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

Use the following operator words, which most search tools will 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)

Remember to use "quotation marks" to keep phrases together and (brackets) to keep synonyms together.