Finding information

A search strategy is an organised approach to searching that helps you find relevant and accurate information about your topic. It includes using keywords and alternative terms, structuring your search with AND and OR and applying filters (limits).

Identifying keywords

Whether you have been given a broad or specific topic, you will need to identify the key concepts from the assignment question. These are the words or phrases that describe your topic and become the keywords (search terms) you will use as the basis of your search.

For help identifying keywords from your assignment topic, see understanding your question.

Note: You may need to perform multiple searches with different combinations of your keywords to find information on the varying aspects of your topic.

Searching and reviewing your results

Start searching by entering the keywords you identified from your topic into the Library catalogue or a relevant database. You can use the in-built filters (also called limits) in the catalogue or database to quickly narrow your search results by date (last 5 or 10 years), resource type (books, peer-reviewed journals) or language (English) based on your assignment requirements.

Review your initial search results by quickly scanning the title and abstract (summary) of the items you find to check if they are relevant to your topic. Based on the keywords from your assignment, your initial results may not always retrieve the best or most relevant resources.

Expanding and refining your search

You can use the following techniques to help improve your search and further develop your search strategy.

Alternative terms

Concepts can often be expressed in different ways, e.g. the term harm may be referred to using the related terms risks or disadvantages. Think about the different terms (alternative terms, related terms, synonyms) that may be used to describe the same concept. This can help expand your search to find more information. To find alternative keywords, try the following:

• Use a thesaurus
• Search for the keyword/concept in Google or Google Scholar
• Scan the abstracts (summaries) of relevant articles identified from your initial search for alternative keywords, phrases or subjects

The following table shows alternative terms that could be used for some of the main concepts from the specific assignment topic:

Artificial intelligence	Benefits	Harm	Communication
Generative AI Machine learning AI	Advantages Opportunities Job efficiency	Disadvantages Privacy Job loss	Conversational AI Content creation Virtual assistants

Combining your search terms

When searching in the catalogue and databases, you can combine your keywords using AND and OR.

• AND narrows your search, returning results that contain all of your terms. For example, Artificial intelligence AND communication will only return articles that include both keywords, Artificial intelligence and communication.

• OR broadens your search, returning results that contain either of your terms. For example, Artificial intelligence OR generative AI will return articles that include either of these keywords.

Other search techniques

You can use these tips to search the Library catalogue, databases, or Google.

Phrase searching

Phrase searching allows you to search for two or more words as an exact phrase. This will only retrieve articles where those words appear together in the text. It will decrease the number of results you get but make the results more relevant. To search for a phrase, add double quotes around the term. For example: “artificial intelligence”

Truncation

Truncation can help you search for a word that has multiple endings. To truncate, add the truncation symbol (usually an asterisk *) after the last common letter of variations. For example, communicat* will retrieve articles with the terms communicate, communication, communicating and communicated in them.

Example of a search strategy

Using these techniques, you can create a search strategy that can be used across different databases. Remember, you may have to do multiple searches using different combinations of keywords to ensure you retrieve relevant sources for each aspect of your topic.

Can’t find what you need?

If you retrieve too many or too few results or aren’t finding relevant sources, you may need to revise your search strategy.