Consider aspects (angles, facets) of your topic:
1. Develop a clear research question:
For example, a research question might look like this:
How has Asia reformed their educational system and what can Americans learn from it?
2. Break down your research question into keywords or important concepts:
Keywords: i. Educational reform; ii. Asia, iii. America
3. Brainstorm synonyms for your keywords or important concepts:
Synonyms: i. School reform; ii. China or Japan, iii. United States
Here ia a little recap of using Boolean Search Operators: AND, OR, NOT Logical Operators
You can use the following logical operators (also known as Booleans) in your searches:
Use AND to find all of your search terms
Use OR to find one, some, or all of your search terms
Use NOT before a term that you want to exclude
Some prefer to capitalize the logical operators, but this is not required.
Sample searches
children and travel finds documents that contain both terms, children and travel anywhere within the searched text.
postmortem or autopsy finds documents that contain either postmortem or autopsy or both. At least one of your terms must be present. OR is good to use when searching for variant spellings or synonymous terms.
"benjamin franklin" not bache finds documents that contain the term Benjamin Franklin, but that do not contain the term Bache. This would include documents that mention Benjamin Franklin, but not his great-grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache.
How to search for and, or, not as words
When your search term includes and, or, or not as words rather than logical operators, enclose your search terms in double quotation marks. For example: "black and white photographs"
