Doing Keyword Searches
Lynn W Zimmerman, PhD
What is keyword searching?
The process of searching electronically stored information to locate, and identify potentially useful articles and websiteso a specific wordo combination of words
The Advantage of Keyword Searching
What are the disadvantages of subject, title, or author searches?o Title and author – have to know what
you are looking foro Subject - what terms have been entered
into the subject area of the record A Keyword search
o looks for words anywhere in the record
Before You Start Write a list of key words and phrases about
topic Example
o You want information on how to write a resume.o What happens if you type in the word: resume?o What can you do? o Narrow by typing ‘resume template’ or ‘resume and
employment’
Interested in applying for a job in the US? o Resume template American o Resume template US
Basic Search Strategies
Type in the exact word or phrase that you want to look foro For the exact phrase, use “” to identify it as a set
phrase• lessons• “lesson plans”• “grammar lesson plans”
Type in a string of words related to the topic. Without “”, the search engine with look for
the words in any order and locationo Grammar lesson plans elementary EFL
Boolean Searching Finds a group of words or phrases linked by
and, or, and not, w/# (within a range) and not w/#.
Examples:grammar lesson plansgrammar lessons and elementary EFLgrammar lessons or elementary EFLgrammar lessons and not secondary
EFLgrammar w/5 EFLgrammar not w/27 secondary
What Can Happen? Fuzzy search - Finds words even if misspelled
o A search for ‘grammar” would also find ‘grammer’ or ‘gramar’
Phonic search - Finds words that sound alikeo ‘pear’ in a search for ‘pair’
Synonym expansion - Finds word synonymso ‘grammar games’ may also give ‘grammar
quizzes’, ‘grammar puzzles’ Stemming - Finds grammatical variations on
endingso linguist, linguistic, linguistics
Your turn What is the topic you are thinking of
for your thesis?o Think of 3 keywords, then think of 3
keyword phraseso Arrange your keyword phrases different
ways using the Boolean connectors