Finding Information Kevin Klipfel, Information Literacy Coordinator, California State University, Chico. kklipfel@csuchico.edu

Developing Keywords One you’ve gone through the process of choosing an effective research topic, the next thing you’ll need to do is develop some keywords. Keyword is the term researchers use for the search terms you need to develop – based on your initial research topic choice – in order to search the library catalog and databases well. If you develop good keywords, you’ll be able to strategically search library resources for materials on your topic. This will make doing research much easier. This module will get you started choosing keywords. Let’s start off by considering an example.

Example 1: Health Sciences Topic Suppose you were assigned the following paper topic, The purpose of this assignment is to teach you to do research at the college level. In this paper you will research one recent research finding (published within the last 5 years) relating to student health, and write a 3-5 page essay discussing your findings, using well-researched sources as evidence. Use your research to make a recommendation to the university health center about how they can use your research to improve student services. And that, based on your interests - and after you went through the process of developing a topic - you decided you wanted to write about: Tentative topic: Whether mediation can help college students reduce stress.

Developing Keywords: Step 1 How would you get started searching for information? What you can do is go through the steps in our Keyword Exercise Handout. This will help you develop effective keywords you can use to search the library for information.

Developing Keywords: Step 2 The next step is to identify the key concepts from your initial research interest.

Developing Keywords: Step 3 This will allow you to separate out the main concepts you are working with. You can then figure out synonyms you might use for those topics. They will be useful if for some reason your initial terms don’t work out. Also, once you start searching, you can write in the scientific terms scholars use for your keywords.

A Quick Search: Discovery Now you’re well prepared to begin to search our databases. Even just a simple search of Discovery – our main library search box – with “meditation stress reduction college students” as our keyword: turns up some pretty useful results.

Simple Search Results These relevant results will help you get started with your research. If you click on an article title, you can browse the abstract – or basic summary of the article – to see if it’s relevant to you. There’s no need to read an entire article just to see if it might work for your purposes. Another good trick is to click on the article title and see what other keywords and subject headings are given. This can help you conduct further, and even more effective, searches.

Searching is a Process One of the most important things to remember about searching for information is that it is a multi- step process. Even if you find a lot of great articles with your first search – which may be rare – the more searches you conduct, the better your information, and the more informed you’ll tend to be. Play with different searches based on your keywords and synonyms. This will produce even more relevant results.

Searching is … not an exact science. Searching is something that you’ll learn to get good at. Following the concepts in this module will definitely help you. But there’s no substitute for practice: like anything else, the more often you do it, the better you’ll get. Just remember that searching for information is a process, done in several steps. This will help you feel less frustrated if you can’t find what you need immediately. And don’t forget: although the general principles will be the same – using good keywords; conducting multiple searches; using subject headings; and so forth – each search will be a little different. There’s no algorithm for perfect searching; that’s why it requires you to think critically.

The Perfect Source? – Forget about It. One common frustration students face is that they think they are unable to find information on their topic because they can’t find that one “perfect” source – the one that contains all the information they’ll need to write the paper they want to write. But that perfect source is rare – so rare you’ll probably just want to forget about it. Instead, be mindful that you may need to use multiple different sources – of multiple types – in order to find, and then creatively combine, the right kind of information for your paper. Let’s consider an example of this.

Combining Sources: Music Topic Suppose you’ve been given an assignment like the following: Your assignment is to write a music review for the popular music website Pitchfork.com. Your feature story can critique a particular song, album, or live performance, and should be the length of the average Pitchfork review. Topic adapted from an assignment designed by Christina Lee, Nicole Berland, and several librarians, for English 105, UNC Chapel Hill (Spring 2013).

Selecting a Topic When thinking about my topic – and after going through the process of topic selection – I thought that what I wanted to write about was the new album of my favorite singer, “alt-country” musician Justin Townes Earle, entitled Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now. I’d read lots of reviews on the free web that said the new album – which sounds a lot like a classic soul record – strayed from JTE’s country roots. But, in interviews, JTE said that if you understand the history of American music, country and soul actually have the same roots. So, I was thinking that my Pitchfork review could find information to support the argument that, contrary to many critics, JTE’s new sound is actually not a departure at all: he’s always been making music grounded the roots of American music.

Choosing Keywords: Summarizing my Topic So, again, I went through the process of developing keywords:

Choosing Keywords: Identifying Key Concepts

Choosing Keywords: Synonyms

Analyzing my Concepts Now, what I notice here by looking at my chart is that I’m going to have to do a couple things: 1. Build my argument using several different concepts: 1. The critical response to Nothing’s Gonna Change … 2. information about the history of country music in America 3. information bout the history of soul music in America. 2. Find information related to each of my concepts. I’ll need to find information – by conducting independent searches – on 1., 2., and 3., separately, and then combine them to support my main thesis when I write my paper.

Search 1: Concept 1 (New Album) 1. Articles and interviewers about the new album. Here I might want to use “popular” sources. I could search Google for: Justin Townes Earle. Justine Townes Earle “Nothing’s Going to Change the Way You Feel About Me Now” Justine Townes Earle “Nothing’s Going to Change the Way You Feel About Me Now” Album Review. I can also perform similar searches in Discovery. The library has lots of popular articles, in addition to its scholarly sources.

Search 2: Concept 2 (Country Music) 2. Now I want to search for information about the history of the genre of country music. Since this topic is pretty general, I’m going to use our library catalog to search for a book on this topic. A simple book search of “Country Music” in the library catalog turns up relevant books that are worth checking out. A search like “country music roots” or “country music history” might be even better.

Search 3: Concept 3 (Soul Music) 3. My last major concept search has to do with soul music. In many of the interviews I read, JTE mentions Stax Records, an old soul record company that made music he was influenced by. This might be worth checking out for my purpose of learning about the overlap between country and soul music. If I search for books on Stax Records I get a result that should have the exact kind of information I need.

Combining Sources Now I can take the information from my three main searches and creatively combine them to make the argument I originally wanted to make: There’s no one source that would have allowed me to do this. But, by combining popular and scholarly materials, I’m able to make my argument, using good evidence and scholarly research.

Summing Up These are some of the major conceptual issues involved with searching for information when doing your research. As you advance in your college career, you’ll want to begin using more specific databases related to your particular subject. Instruction from a librarian in how to do so will be very helpful! But the information in this module should help you get started.

Contact a Librarian If you’re having any trouble finding information, don’t forget to contact a librarian: it’s what we do! For questions about this module, or how to incorporate it into specific courses, contact: Kevin Klipfel, Information Literacy Coordinator, California State University, Chico. Contact: kklipfel@csuchico.edu