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List synonyms for the keywords that you underlined in your research question. Often words that we think describe what we're searching for aren't what scholars use or have multiple meanings. For example: theater can refer to a surgical or operating theater or a military theater.
| Themes | English Authors | Time Travel Novels |
| Technological progression | H.G. Wells | The Time Machine |
| Modernism | Charles Dickens | The Chronic Argonauts |
| Controlling nature | English writers | A Christmas Carol |
Unlike with Google, where you can type in full sentences or questions, when searching in any of the library resources (Primo, journals, or databases) you need to use the Boolean Operators AND, OR, and NOT to string together your search terms.
| Truncate Root Words | Phrases | Use multiple search terms and parentheses in your search strings |
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Using an * at the end of a word such as thema* will bring back everything with that root (thematic, thematically, etc). |
Putting quotation marks around a phrase will tell Primo to keep those words together. For example: "The Chronic Argonauts." The Chronic Argonauts without quotes can bring back and article on the Argonauts welcoming back a player after a chronic injury. The words the, Argonauts, and chronic all appear, but without being linked together, it's not the title of the book that you're looking for. |
(theme OR "controlling nature") AND H.G. Wells AND The Time Machine Using parentheses is a lot like the distributive property in math. The search inside the parentheses is done first. |
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Be Aware: Be careful about the words you truncate. For example: cell* will bring back everything from cellular phones to cellulitis, so you could quickly make your search results irrelevant. |
Be Aware: Stringing multiple search terms together using AND narrows your search. Therefore, sometimes stringing too many terms together with AND can make your search so narrow you receive few, or no, results. |