Skip to Main Content
My Account Hours
Menu

Getting Started with Agriculture Research

Guidance on identifying a topic, effectively finding sources, and putting it all together for research assignments in Herbert College of Agriculture.

Searching Tutorials

Choosing Keywords

How do you typically conduct a search that will yield relevant sources? If you are searching in Google, you may start by asking a question, such as:

How does 4-H work?

While typing a sentence such as this would work in Google, library resources and databases require you employ keyword searches. Keyword searches include the most important terms. Using the example above, this search could be distilled down into a keyword search like:

4-H AND operations

You may need to think creatively about your keywords to get the best results. Try thinking about how the term might be used in an academic setting, variations on the term, alternate spellings, or synonyms. One way to improve the quality of keywords and retrieve more relevant search results is by consulting a thesaurus to discover established terms in the agricultural controlled vocabulary. Some useful Thesauri are linked below.

Boolean Operators

You can combine search terms using the phrases AND, OR, or NOT to make your search more specific.

  • AND tells the database both terms on either side of the operator need to be present for a result to appear; 
    example: redeye bass AND south carolina
  • OR tells the database that the terms on either side of the operator are interchangeable. It’s great for plugging in synonyms for your keywords; 
    example: film OR movie OR cinema OR motion picture
  • NOT tells the database to exclude the term from your search; 
    example:  “elder NOT tree” will return search results about older people, not elder tree

Search Strategy Builder

The Search Strategy Builder is a tool designed to teach you how to create a search string using Boolean logic. While it is not a database and is not designed to input a search, you should be able to cut and paste the results into most databases’ search boxes.

  Concept 1 AND Concept 2 AND Concept 3
Name your core concepts here    
Search terms Search terms Search terms

List alternate terms for each concept.

These can be synonyms, or they can be specific examples of the concept.

You can use single words, or phrases with quotation marks,
or truncated words with the *

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

Now copy and paste the above search strategy into a database search box.

The Search Strategy Builder was developed by the University of Arizona Libraries(CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US).