When preparing to search the literature, it is important to take a moment and plan a search strategy that will help you find what you are looking for. This process can involve several steps:
- Formulate a question: This may seem like a basic step, but it is important to consider what question it is you are trying to answer. If you cannot articulate a question, it will be very difficult to know if/when you have found the answer.
- Brainstorm search terms: Most concepts and topics can be described in a wide variety of ways. As such, you want to make sure you are considering all the different variations possible and including those terms in your search to help ensure the search is thorough.
- Develop a search strategy: Using the terms that you brainstormed from your question, you will want to develop a search strategy that will help you hone in on the appropriate information. How you build your search strategy can vary some from database to database, but there are a few tools and techniques that are pretty standard and can be used across many resources.
- Select a database: Just as important as how you search is where you search. In order to find the information you are looking for, you need to make sure you are looking in the right place.
Using the sub-pages on the left, you can explore more information about how to accomplish each of these steps.
