Humanities 1301  Tags: dr_dawn dawn_elmore-mccrary humanities inquiry_process interdisciplinary  

What do you need to find out or verify about your topic?

List research questions (big or small!), your thesis statement, and key words or phrases.

So...what's the difference between KEYWORD v. SUBJECT searching?

• Keyword search = to combine key words or for more specific search; finds items that contain your keywords
• Subject search = for broad search or when you know terminology; finds items that are about that topic
• Use keyword and subject searching together: start with a keyword search, find an item that's relevant, then look for subject headings within item descriptions and incorporate those subject words into your search strategy.

Click on the Comments section below and add your questions and/or keywords! Put your topic choice as the "subject."

Before you jump into searching online, you need to list primary keywords and as many synonyms and related keywords as possible. Use the list of words to create multiple combinations with the word AND in order to have a successful search:

• writing, expression, communication,
• pictograms, hieroglyphs
• people, mayan, egyptian, rome 

• Use symbols such as the * at the end of key words to pick up alternate endings. (keyword* = keyword, keywords, etc.)

Which search statement would give you the FEWEST hits?