Developing Search Terms

Once you know your topic, it's time to come up with the terms to use in your search.

Topic: Growing elderberries in New England using agroforestry methods.

1.   Find the obvious keywords (elderberries, New England, agroforestry)

2.   Brainstorm related terms - broad/narrow, singular/plural, synonyms, scientific names

elderberries

elderberry

elder

sambucus

sambucus nigra

sambucus canadensis

American elderberry

European elderberry

3.   Look up subject headings or do some "discovery" searching to find subject headings and other terms.  EBSCO has a thesaurus to help you.  Unfortunately, JSTOR, GoogleScholar, and PubMed don't not make use of subject headings the same way.

To search effectively in databases and search engines that don't use subject headings, it's even more important to understand Boolean searching, syntax, and limiters.