OAT 151

To search in library databases, you need to use keywords. What is a keyword?

A keyword is the main idea or ideas in a topic sentence. If you type a whole sentence into the library search interface, you won't get very good results. You need to use keywords.

What are the keywords in the following sentence? What is the business culture like in India? The main ideas are business, culture, and India. These are the keywords.

If you can't think of keywords or if your keywords aren't getting the results you want. Try Google. You CAN type a whole sentence into Google, so type your topic sentence and scan the results for likely keywords. This search generated keywords like etiquette and intercultural.

Sometimes the scope of our search is too narrow or broad. If you get too many results with the keyword "communication" try narrowing your search to "intercultural communication" instead. If "intercultural business communication" brings too few results, try broadening it to "intercultural communication."

Another source of alternate keywords is a good thesaurus. It will help you find synonyms for your keywords.

Sometimes a slight change can make a big difference! If you're not getting the results you hoped for, use a different form of the word instead. You can try cultural instead of culture or communicate instead of communication for example.