Thinking in Keywords

  This lesson is about brainstorming any topic.  An important step in this process is to learn to think in keywords rather than in whole questions.  There are several reasons to do this:

• Writers use different words to describe the same ideas, or may put them in different order
•  Internet search engines look at main words and skip small ones
• Some sources cover aspects of your topic, but others will focus on one small part

Try out these three steps:

1.  State your question or topic
2. Pick out the keywords in the question or topic
3.  Add to your list of keywords by thinking of synonyms and related terms (don’t forget singular and plural forms, too)

 Here are some examples of search topics and relevant keywords:

Topic	Keywords in the Topic	Related Keywords
What are some ways to save energy at home?	Ways, save, energy, home	Ways: way, methods, technology Save: reduce, bill, bills, cheaper, green Energy: power, resources, utilities, heat, light, lighting, electricity, wood, gas, fireplace Home: house
What caused the recession?	Caused, recession	Caused: cause, start, started, “set off” Recession: downturn, “economic conditions”, housing, “wall street”, investments, mortgages
Breast cancer	Breast, cancer, “breast cancer”	Breast: mammary Cancer: Neoplasm, etiology, diagnosis, epidemiology, occurrence,
Are there advantages to being bilingual?	Advantages, bilingual	Advantages: advantage, benefit, benefits Bilingual: “second language”, “two languages”

What do you do with the keywords?  See the tutorials for the Library Catalog and the online magazine databases to see some examples.