History

• Look at your question(s) - what are the keywords you will use to search?
• Now that you have your keywords, write out some possible synonyms of each word or related concepts. 
• Take notes of what you are using to search
• Keep track of what databases you have used

For example, if you are searching for information on the Great Depression, you might also want to look for:

• Dust Bowl
• Black Thursday
• Smoot-Hawley Tariff 
• Economic Depression 

Adjust your searches by narrowing the focus or by combining research terms.

Once you type in your search terms, use the "Refine my results" list on the left-hand side to help narrow down your search by:

• format
• subject
• publication date
• and more!
  

In many databases, you can use a wildcard character to retrieve results of all words that start with the letters before the wildcard. Often, this character is *.

So when searching for "pollinat*", you will get results for: pollination, pollinators, and pollinating.

AND / OR / NOT

Created by the University of Wisconsin Whitewater.