1. Keywords Keywords are your friend when you are searching the internet, library catalogs or online databases.

2. What is a keyword? A keyword can be defined as a word used to retrieve results when searching for information online. Often, you will use more than one keyword in a search.

3. Find the keywords: Here is an example thesis statement from a junior English paper. What are the keywords? “Since concussions are increasing at a rapid rate in football, researchers are increasing their studies and trying to find new ways to improve the prevention of concussions.”

5. What are synonyms and why should you use them? Synonyms are words that have a similar meaning to your keywords. Using synonyms can result in less search results, more search results or different results. They are useful because sometimes an initial search will bring back too many results, not enough results, or results that are off topic (you meant a computer mouse, not an animal mouse!).

6. What are some synonyms? What are possible synonyms for our example keywords?  Concussions  Football  Prevention

7.  Concussions head injuries brain injuries sports injuries  Football sports athletics  Prevention avoiding precaution

8. What are broader or narrower terms? If you conduct a search and don’t get back enough results, you may want to broaden your keyword(s).  What is a broader keyword for Corvette? If you conduct a search and get back too many results, you many want to narrow your keyword(s).  What is a narrower keyword for kitchen appliance?

9. From our sample thesis statement:  For “Concussions”, we thought of these synonyms: head injuries brain injuries sports injuries Are these broader or narrower keywords?  For “Football”, we thought of these synonyms: sports Athletics Are these broader or narrower keywords?

10. Things to keep in mind when using keywords: Keywords don’t take into account the meaning of a word (I meant Nirvana the band, not a higher state of consciousness!). You can use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) when combining keywords to get super spiffy results.