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Engineering & Sustainability

Search Strategy Intro

Search Strategies start with your research topic.

Try to think of a way to narrow down your research topic into one sentence. If you're having trouble thinking of a research topic, you can ask yourself some questions:

  • What do you want to write about?

  • What do you already know about this topic?

  • What do would you like to know more about your topic?

  • Is there a specific population you can address? Multiple? This can be age, gender, ethnicity, economic, etc...

  • Is there a specific time period you wish to focus on?

  • Does your research topic focus on uncovering a problem? Or does it focus on solutions to a problem?

When asking yourself these questions, also make sure to keep these things in mind:

  • Make sure your topic is not too broad or else you won't be able to choose what information to include. 

  • If you're at a complete loss, read some highly cited review articles. They often specify areas that need more study.

  • Read your assignment carefully. It could give you ideas on what direction you should take your topic to narrow it down.

Boolean Logic

Boolean Logic is the next step in creating a search strategy.

Let's use "the eco-social impact of contemporary marine engineering on avifauna in wetlands" as an example.

  1. Break it down. We've addressed an issue we want to uncover more about, but to create a search strategy, we need cut the fluff and only include our keywords. In this case, it would be:

    • ecological

    • contemporary

    • marine

    • engineering

    • avifauna

    • wetlands

  2. Broaden your search with Boolean Logic. Even though we brainstormed to our research topic to be specific, we want our search to be broad enough to yield adequate results. To do this, we'll use AND and OR statements.

    • The difference between AND / OR.  The most important aspect of Boolean Logic is to understand is the difference between AND and OR statements. Joining two words or phrases with an AND statement will make it so that both segments must be in your search results. Joining two words or phrases with an OR statement will make it so that either segment can be present to pull a result from the query. For example, the statement apple AND pie will need both of those keywords present for the resource to populate in your search results, so you'd be searching for apple pie. An OR statement would pull every resource that contains either word (apple, pie).

    • How to use AND / ORThe best way to use Boolean Logic is to think of as many relevant terms as possible so that you don't miss relevant results simply because you used different terminology than your search results. Let's think about this with our example. In this step, we'll brainstorm other possible keywords that are relevant to our existing keywords respectively:

      • ecological, eco, green, environmental, climate, habitat, terrain

      • contemporary, modern, present, current, recent, latest, 21st century

      • marine, aquatic, sea, deepsea, maritine, naval, ocean, shore, underwater, ships, submarines, boats, benthic, amphibious, water

      • engineering, design, construction, manufacturing, implementation, systemization, regulations

      • avifauna, wetland bird, aquatic fowl, mud hen, moorbirds, wading birds, marsh birds, waterbirds, heron, egret, crane, osprey, kingfisher, teal, snipe, yellowlegs, blackbird, sparrow, sandpiper, lapwing, spoonbill, ibis, stork

      • wetlands, lowland, marsh, marshland, mire, fen, quagmire, moor, estuary, slough, swampland, everglade, delta

  3. Additional syntax that can help your search strategy. AND and OR statements are the bread and butter of search strategy syntax, but below is other helpful syntax for creating robust queries.

    • * - Truncation. Everything after the truncated keyword can contain any character. For example, librar* could result in library, libraries, or librarian.

    • ? - Wildcard. Replaces one character with anything. For example, 21st?century where ? can be a dash or space (or anything else).

    • " " - Phrase. Everything in the quotes will be searched for as one keyword. For example, apple pie may search for both terms, apple or pie, but "apple pie" will only search for apple pie.

    • NOT - Boolean phrase to exclude. If you find yourself getting results that aren't relevant to your research topic, you can use a NOT statement. For example, if you're searching for wolves, you could search wolf AND wolves NOT "wolf spider". 

  4. Create your first search. With all the pieces assembled, it's time to put it all together in a way that makes sense. Join your similar keywords with OR statements and combine all the OR keyword groupings with AND statements. This will make it so that at least one term from each grouping needs to be present to yield a search result from your query. 

(eco* OR green OR environment OR climate OR habitat OR terrain) AND

(contemporary OR modern OR present OR current OR recent OR latest OR "21st century") AND

(marine OR aquatic OR sea* OR maritime OR nav* OR saltwater OR brackish OR ocean* OR shore OR underwater OR benthic) AND

(engineer* OR design OR construction OR manufact* OR implement* OR system* OR regulat*) AND

(avifauna OR bird* OR aquatic fowl OR mud hen OR moorbird OR wading OR marsh bird OR waterbird OR heron OR egret OR crane OR osprey OR kingfisher OR teal OR snipe OR yellowleg OR blackbird OR sparrow OR sandpiper OR lapwing OR spoonbill OR ibis OR stork) AND

(wetlands OR lowland OR marsh OR marshland OR mire OR fen OR quagmire OR moor OR estuary OR slough OR swampland OR everglade OR delta)

Additional notes on using Boolean searches. Now that you've created a search, here are some tips to move forward with your querying.

  • Save your search in any type of text document. This will allow you to easily copy and paste your search easily into other library resources.

  • Remember that most databases will also have ways to filter your search. Work smart, not hard.

  • Don't be afraid to stray from your original search strategy. For example, even though my research topic is "the ecological impact of contemporary marine engineering on avifauna in wetlands," I might want to take out the terms I've used for contemporary so I can better find primary sources of ecological events that happened in the past due to marine engineering. I could make it relevant in my paper by drawing a comparison to older engineering designs to contemporary ones.

  • Some databases are smarter than others. It's best to assume that databases have no concept of the meaning of your words so you can make your search as robust as possible.

  • Parenthesis aren't always necessary, but some databases may requiring them for nesting.

  • These tools however they make sense to you and don't need to follow my exact example.