Library Research Workshop

Develop Searching Language

Start with a question, such as "What is the effect of psychedelics on chronic pain?"

What are the main concepts of the question? 

In this case, the main concepts are psychedelics and chronic pain. We could do a search with just those terms, but we would get limited results. Consider all the other language available to describe these concepts, such as synonyms and related terms. 

Create a bank of keywords (and add more as you search!)

• Browse synonyms in a thesaurus 
• Conduct some initial searches with limited terms to see what else shows up
• Include scientific or species names, when relevant
• Consider including various spellings of words (color vs. colour) 
• Consider how a concept is described in different contexts: academic, trade, popular, etc. 
• Consult the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) or other controlled vocabularies 

Connect terms using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)  

• peanut butter AND jelly = search results with both terms
• peanut butter OR jelly = search results with either term
• peanut butter NOT jelly = search results exclude jelly

Use special punctuation when appropriate  

• Quotation marks around more than one word preserve a phrase as one unit (e.g. “social media”) 
• Truncation searches for multiple words with same root (e.g. activ* includes active, activism, activity...) 
• Wildcard searching allows for multiple spellings of words
  • Hashtag: Use colo#r can be used to find all records containing color or colour.
  • Question mark: Use ne?t to find all records containing neat, nest or next.

Sample search query:

["chronic pain" OR fibromyalgia OR arthritis OR CPS OR "chronic pain syndrome"]   

AND  

["magic mushroom" OR fung* OR psilocybin OR psychedelic]

Examples of other search queries in this spreadsheet