Library Guides: Research Survival Guide: Identify Key Terms

What are Key Terms?

Key terms are the concepts within your research question that you are interested in exploring. They are the key ingredients that hold your research question together. To find the key terms, look for the nouns in your research question. You will use these key terms to search in the Library’s online databases.

How to Use Synonyms for Your Key Terms

Synonyms allow you to broaden your search. You are telling the search engine that either term will suffice – this one OR that one. Book and journal authors may use any number of terms when writing about a topic. Using a variety of key terms to when searching allows you to find these variants.

Here are examples of synonyms.

If my key term is business: Synonyms are industry or commerce
If my key term is marketing: A synonym is advertising

In the search box, we would input:

(business OR industry OR commerce) AND (marketing OR advertising)

Boolean Operators

The OR in the above statement is called a Boolean operator. Boolean operators must be typed in all capital letters when using them in the Library's databases. There are 3 Boolean operators you can use:

An OR between two key words indicates you would like to find either or both terms - great for use with synonyms!
An AND between two key words indicates you would like to find both terms and not one or the other
A NOT between two key words indicates that you do not wish to find the term after the NOT

Examples of Key Terms

Research Question

How can urban transportation in Hamilton, Ontario be improved to be more sustainable and provide equitable access to all Hamiltonians

Key Terms/Concepts

urban transportation, Hamilton, sustainability, equitable access

Synonyms

urban transit, smart cities, commuting, ridesharing, environmentally friendly

Pro Tip: Quotation Marks and Asterisks

In many databases, if you want to find 2 words together, put quotation marks around them. For example, enter “artificial intelligence” instead of artificial intelligence. The reason is that this way, both words will be found side-by-side. Otherwise, you could find resources that mention the two words separately, for example, the intelligence of using artificial sweeteners instead of the use of artificial intelligence.
Use the asterisk symbol to find variants of your keyword. For example, transport* will find variants such as: transport, transports, transported or transportation.

What To Do With Key Terms

Enter your key terms and synonyms into one of the library's search tools. In this way, you can explore the resources available and perhaps add other key terms you find to your list.

Enter your key terms and synonyms into the Library’s Search Everything tool to see if you are able to find resources on your chosen topic. See the Search Everything tool guide for help. Note that in some cases, there may not be anything published on your topic or you may need to search using a different search tool.
There may be other topics that interest you that you find while searching.
As you search, you will likely discover other key terms you can use.

Finding Other Key Terms

You can find more key terms by looking at the subjects inside the record for an item. For example, see this record for “Canada’s New Government funds transit security in Ontario” in the Library’s Search Everything tool. Scroll down to the Details section of the screen and look at the Subjects. Here you will see more subjects you can add to your list of key terms. Click on any subject to see related resources.