When searching for sources in the library, you can't copy and paste your essay proposal into a search bar and expect results. Instead, you must break your proposal down into essential keywords.
Keywords are the big ideas in your assignment proposal. For example, if your proposal is about how pollution affects air quality in cities, your initial keywords might be
air quality / pollution / cities
You can expand your set of keywords by thinking about narrower or broader ideas that relate to the words you have chosen. For example, you may want to think more narrowly
pollution - > automobile pollution
At this stage in the assignment, you should have narrowed your topic down sufficiently and your keywords should reflect this. If specific keywords aren't leading to a sufficient number of results, you may have to think more broadly. For example
sulfur dioxide pollution - > air pollution
After thinking about narrower and broader ideas as well as synonyms (words that are different but alike in meaning) you'll end up with a bigger set of keywords that will make searching for books and articles easier. For example
air quality, environmental quality, air pollutants, emissions, pollution, automobile pollution, cities, urban environment, United States
To help focus your results, add a term such as 'United States' or other geographic limiter
There is no "correct" keyword. When searching the library, different combinations of keywords will give you different results. You will have to use trial and error with keyword combinations to find results that are relevant to your proposal. There is no way around this process; research takes time and successful research will expand your understanding of a topic.
*The proposal used as an example here is not a social problem. Do not use it for your assignment.
Use a thesaurus
Online dictionaries and thesauri will provide you with synonyms and related ideas for your keywords. A good place to start is Merriam-Webster.
Select Thesaurus next to the search bar and type in a keyword.
Results page for thesaurus search "achievement"
Use database features
You will search for sources using library databases. These databases have built-in features that make it easier to discover keywords.
For example, when you begin typing a keyword into a database's search bar, the database may try to auto-complete your text (you may have encountered this with Google searches). Auto-complete can help with catching and correcting word misspellings.
Auto-complete can also steer you toward alternative keywords that the database recognizes. As you begin typing keywords, the database search bar will populate a drop-down list of potential keywords that you may be interested in. This too may look familiar from Google or other types of online searching.
Databases also categorizes different sources by topic. Look at the Subjects field below each article in your search results to see what other words are used to categorize the source. These subject terms could be useful to add to a keyword list. See the below image for an example.
