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Search Tips
- Place quotation marks around phrases, names, or titles
- Use the asterisk symbol (*) at the end of a word to retrieve variant endings of that word
- ex. bank* will retrieve: banks, banking or banker
- Use a question mark within a word as a wildcard
- ex. wom?n will retrieve woman or women
Brainstorm Search Terms
- Once you have chosen a topic, write it down in the form of a question or brief statement:
- What is the relationship between SAT scores and college success?
- Pull out the keywords and phrases that are most specific to your topic:
- "SAT scores" and "college success"
- Take those keywords and phrases and brainstorm related terms, concepts or synonyms
- SAT scores > "scholastic aptitude test" or "college admission test"
- college > "university" or "higher education"
- success > achievement
- Formulate a search strategy using boolean search, wildcards, phrases, etc.
- (SAT OR "scholastic aptitude test") AND (college OR universit*) AND (succe* OR achieve*)
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