Develop a search strategy

Search strategy
A search strategy involves thinking of keywords you can use to find information to answer
your assignment question. The more keywords you can think of to describe your topic, the
more likely you will find useful information.

Organise your ideas with an idea table

Use an idea table to help you organise all the words your key ideas are known by.

- Head each column in your idea table with a different idea you need to research.
- Beneath each idea, list your alternative terms.
- Use a thesaurus and/or other reference sources to help you think of synonyms.

Also consider alternative words for terms, such as:

- NZ terminology and the international equivalents (e.g. rubbish (UK/NZ) is also known
as garbage (US))
- Different spellings, such as US versus UK (e.g. neighbourhood (UK/NZ) or
neighborhood (US))

Try these strategies to improve your search results.

Keywords
Don't be too specific to start with. Fewer keywords will widen your search.

Change, add or remove keywords from your search. Keep trying different combinations from
your idea table. Basically a table with your brainstorming

Symbols
Use symbols in your searches to refine or widen your searches:

- Use an asterisk * to find different endings of your keyword

e.g. sustain* to search for sustainable, sustainability...

- Use "quotation marks" to search for a phrase

 e.g. "green building" will find resources with this phrase only, not any resource that
has the words 'building' and 'green' anywhere in it.

Filters
Use filters to refine your search results. Most catalogues and databases will provide and
option to refine, filter or limit your search results.
You can usually filter results by:

- Date
- Subject
- Peer reviewed / Scholarly articles
- Format (article, book, recording, reference source, newspaper article, etc.)