Keywords+and+Synonyms+Block+D

Keywords and Synonyms Block D

__**Explanation of Technique**__
The ability to use keywords and synonyms is a skill most students, here at ISM, think they have. However, most of us overlook details that can interfere or advance our search results significantly. This technique explains what to type into search engine search bars and how to type it.

__**Definitions: **__

 * **Keywords:**
 * Words that are relevant to your topic that can serve as a description or as the subject of your research. They can be details such as dates or names of people relevant to your topic, or broad terms such as "causes" or "opinions."
 * Multiple keywords can be used.
 * **Synonyms:**
 * If your chosen keywords do not give you the information you want, be creative and try again
 * Change your keywords with synonyms, you may want to use a thesaurus because your keywords may be "stop words"
 * Synonyms for keywords can be found by searching words in the thesaurus
 * **Stop Words:**
 * Stop words are words that are commonly included in keywords typed into search bars—search engines overlook these as they can interfere with their findings. Which words the search engine omits or keeps depends on the search engine.Stop words differ depending on the search engine (Stop Words).
 * Even if stop words are included in quotation marks, they will be omitted or replaced by another word (Stop Words).
 * To avoid using stop words, you can simply take them out—use specific words. You can find these by looking at encyclopedia sites of the broader topic like we did for the Printing question in the quiz. Sometimes, you might want to keep the stop word. “Tom and Jerry” for example, won’t work as “Tom” and “Jerry”, you might get Jerry Maguire and Tom Cruise—not the epic cartoon. In this case, you can put “Tom and Jerry” in quotes (Stop Words).
 * "
 * A list of words can be found [|here]
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One must remember though, that stop words vary depending on the search engine (Stop Words).

>> <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">you want both these words to be included in the search results: “apples AND oranges” >> NOT: you want the former word and not the latter to be included: “apple NOT Mac”
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Boolean Search**
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">AND: if
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">OR: you want one or all of the words in your search to be included: “apples OR oranges”
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Acroynyms:**
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For some acronyms such as NYU (New York University), this won’t be a problem as there is not much difference between NYU in lowercase letters and uppercase letters.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">However, AIDS—can be a harder one to search as “aids” could also mean “hearing aids” or “first aids” and not the disease. Whether or not upper case letters will be searched as upper case letters depends on the search engine.

__<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">General Technique to Improve the Efficiency of Your Search Process: __
<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1. Summarize what you’re searching for into one sentence. For example, a research topic can be: What was the effect of World War II on women in the United States? 2. Choose 1-3 major concepts in your research topic sentence, and summarize them in single keywords. For example, the keywords for the above topic could be World War II, Women and United States. 3. Develop distinct lists of different synonyms for these keywords. An example is shown below:

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">World War 2 <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">WWII <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">WW2 || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Females <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Girls || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">United States of America <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">America <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">USA ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">World War II || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Women || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">United States ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">World War Two

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4. Familiarize yourself with the special functions and features of the specific search engine you are using that may aid you in your search. Information on certain search engines commonly used in ISM is included later on in this guide. 5. Input combinations of these keywords into the search bars in search engines, taking into account additional information gained from step 4. For example, “WWII Women USA”. After your first search, you may discover new key words relevant to your topic that you may add to your keyword lists (UCB Libraries).

__<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">How to Use This Technique//EBSCO, United Streaming, JSTOR, Google// and //WorldBook Online : // __
<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">EBSCO: <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">· STOP WORDS: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">· ADVANCED SEARCH:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Some stop words are: "however" "because" "whatever" "whether" "would" "be" "not" "of" "so" "the" and so on. the full list of stop words EBSCOhost has can be found [|here](What are)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In Boolean searching, EBSCOhost will substitute a stop word with another stop word from the list. For example, if you entered company of America, EBSCO will return not only that, but company in America, Company for America and other words that can substitute the stop word "for". (What are)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">With EBSCO, quotations can also be placed around the word so that the exact phrase is searched, although this does not apply for stop words, as the stop words will not be searched. If only stop terms were to be searched, then no results will be yielded. (What are)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Advanced Searching can also be used to yield more results, by clicking
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">APPLY RELATED WORDS, from which EBSCO will search your query, as well as with related words.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Find any of my search terms" can also be used as it asks for EBSCO to search for not all but only some of the search terms.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Find all my search terms" will ask for EBSCO to search for all the words on the query.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__United Streaming:__
<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Keyword Search:


 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You can use keyword search to look for specific media types such as: video segments, images, articles and clipart. (User guide, 3) The search results will show you titles and descriptions that contain the keyword you entered.


 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The power of Boolean Query allows you to include and exclude words or phrases (User guide, 3):


 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ex) Global issue NOT environmental (User guide, 3)


 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ex) Looking for phrases: “”- you will limit your research to media that includes the entire phrase in the title or description (User guide, 3).

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Advanced Search:


 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You can use the Advanced Search keyword option if you need more powerful search tool. The Advanced Search keyword option supports more powerful searching capabilities that allow you to focus on a specific media publisher or limit your search (User guide, 3).

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Search Filters:


 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After typing in the keywords and when the search results are displayed, you can narrow down your results by using the search in the left side of the website.


 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The filter includes subject, grade, media type, video detail, materials, media pack, service, and source. If you wish to remove a filter, click “remove” in the “You have selected” box at the top of the filter (User guide, 3).

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__JSTOR:__

 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Using a searching engine is like learning a new language, as every time you use a new search engine; along with it you learn a new set of rules to be able to efficiently find information through that particular site.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Therefore, while using JSTOR;

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> – Helps you enclose your search term
 * 1) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you want to include more than one term while doing field search;

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(“”) – Help you search for a particular phrase

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Example:// Sun Shine: Typing this term in the search bar would give you any felid that has the word Sun in it, and all the fields that have the word shine.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(Sun shine): This search engine will provide you with fields that have the word Sun and Shine in any order.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“Sun Shine”: You will find the Exact Sun Shine on all the fields that are accumulated for you by the search engine.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2. Searching for common phrases

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When you want to search for terms such as fairytales and miracles, if you want results with those words within ten words of each other, you would construct the following query: “fairytales miracles”~10. By using the tilde (~) symbol, you find results that are within a set number of words of each other (JSTOR).

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3. Stopwords

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Stopwords of a search engine are words that are found in almost every document the search engine can accumulate. Hence the search engine disregards a list of such over used words to produce more concise results (JSTOR).

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The lists of stopwords for JSTOR are;

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">a, about, above, after, again, against, all, also, although, am, an, and, another, any, are, as, at, back, be, because, been, before, being, below, and more can be found [|here]. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4. Field Abbreviations

You can narrow down your search results with the abbreviations. JSTOR uses fields for categorization of metadata and each field is represented in a search by its abbreviation. For example: au:smith finds all items for which Smith is listed as an author.


 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Frequently Used JSTOR Field Abbreviations ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Abbreviation || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">jo: || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ta: || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">aa: || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ab: || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ca: || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ty:fla || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">vo: || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">sn: || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ty:brv || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ra: ||
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Returns Results From || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">journal name || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">item title || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">item author || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">item abstracts || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">illustration captions || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">full length articles || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">journal volumes || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ISSN || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">book reviews || <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">author of a reviewed work ||

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For example: cat OR dog, cat || dog NOT Searches using NOT will only find items that do not contain the search term following it. To find all items with the word cat that do not contain the word dog, search for: cat NOT dog, cat -dog (Be sure to include a space before the dash, but not after)jjso

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__Google :__
> Google results will be automatically matched with the selected language but to have your results open to others, simply select those languages in the preference page (Google Help).
 * 1) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Searching languages:
 * 1) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Other searches:


 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“virus –computer -- the word virus but NOT the word computer
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">+sock -- Only the word sock, and not the plural or any tenses or synonyms
 * ~auto loan -- loan info for both the word auto and its synonyms: truck, car, etc.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">define:computer -- definitions of the word computer from around the Web.
 * red * blue -- the words red and blue separated by one or more words.” (Google Help)

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__WorldBook Online:__
>> The enhanced spelling correction feature replaces a misspelled word with the correct one, informs you of their correction before hand and gives you an option to choose from “other spellings” of the mis-written word (World Book). >> <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The advanced option gives you the opportunity to add stop words into your search. These stop words will be considered. *note*: World Book Online will only consider the first word you put into these set of boxes (World Book)
 * 1) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Spelling auto correction:
 * 1) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Boolean Search

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This free online tool analyzes keywords on the given URL and gives suggestions for some keywords []

[]

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">__Work Cited__
<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Cambridge. "Dropping Common Terms: Stop Words." The Stanford NLP (Natural Language Processing) Group. 2008. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. [].

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Stop Words - Database Search Tips - Research Guides at MIT Libraries." Home - Research Guides at MIT Libraries. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. [].

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"What "What are stop words and how does EBSCO host handle them?." EBSCO Support. EBSCO, Aug 2010. Web. 20 Sep 2010. <http://support.epnet.com/knowledge_base/detail.php?topic=&id=980&page=1>. JSTORJSTOR "Help." JSTOR. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. [].

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"UCB Libraries | How | Choose Keywords for My Search." UCB Libraries | Home Page. University of Colorado at Boulder. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. [].

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">World Book. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. [].

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Google Help : Cheat Sheet." Google. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. [].

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Detailed Searching." JSTOR. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. []. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> "DE Streaming." Discovery Education Streaming. Web. 23 Sep 2010. [].