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Keywords: Small but Mighty

What are keywords?

Keywords:

Sum up your topic

Represent your main ideas

Are single words or very short phrases

Should be used when searching for information

Why do they matter?

The world of online

information is

beyond a locked door

and keywords are

how you get in.

Selecting keywords is just like

picking teams in gym class.

Remember those days?

You’re the captain and it’s your job to pick

people and make the best team possible.

Your first choices are those who will make

strong, smart and reliable teammates.

Think about it this way:

Pick the strongest words with the

most relevance to your main ideas.

Choose your keywords with care

Confidence in searching

comes with good

keywords!

How do I come up with these keywords?

Take those keywords and make sure they’re the

best choices for what you want to find.

Take your thesis or topic and “sum it up”

in two or three main keywords.

Keep clicking, we’ll walk through this together...

Choosing keywords

Teachers who implement technology in their

classrooms are most effective.

Small-town entertainment venues have been bolstered

by the recent economic downturn.

Below are two sample thesis statements.

Try to sum each of them up into 2 or 3 keywords.

What keywords are strongest?

choosing Keywords

Teachers who implement technology in their

classrooms are most effective.

Strongest keywords: teachers and technology, effective Second-choice keywords: implement, classrooms

Why were these keywords chosen? Keywords should say a lot about the focus and purpose of your paper.

This particular paper is going to talk about how teachers who use technology are

most effective. It isn’t going to focus on implementation of technology or

classrooms, so these keywords really aren’t as strong as the others.

Small-town entertainment venues have been

bolstered by the recent economic downturn

Why were these keywords chosen? Keywords should say a lot about the focus and purpose of your paper.

This particular paper is going to talk about how small-town entertainment venues

(like local amusement parks and movie theaters) have benefited from recent

economic hardship. The two main ideas that capture the essence of the paper are

the entertainment venues and the economic downturn.

Strongest keywords: small-town entertainment venues and economic downturn

Second-choice keywords: bolstered, recent

choosing Keywords

teacher educator, instructor, professor, facilitator, tutor, coach elementary, secondary, or post-secondary classroom, department, school, district, state Humanities, social science, science

Choosing the best keywords

Are there any synonyms for this keyword?

Alternate terms? Other phrasings?

Broader terms? Narrower terms?

technology computers, projectors, clickers, smartboards

social networking, collaborative, communicative handheld, mobile, ipod, cell phone, ereader, ipad

web 2.0, blog, wiki, podcast, youtube, search engine

small-town entertainment venues local, regional, small-scale, family-owned movie theater, movie theatre, cinema amusement park, water park, county fair, state park Bar, nightclub, restaurant, comedy club, play

Choosing the best keywords

Are there any synonyms for this keyword?

Alternate terms? Other phrasings?

Broader terms? Narrower terms?

economic downturn financial hardship, recession

high unemployment rates, job shortage economic slump, tough market tightening budget, cutting costs

Educat* educate, educator, education, educating

Lov* Love, loving, lovely, lovingly, lover

Nifty little tricks

The Asterisk * When you put it at the end of a

word, a search will find that word

with all possible word endings.

“economic hardship” A search will only bring back results with the exact phrasing “economic hardship” Will NOT bring back results for economic hard times or economy hardships

Quotation Marks You can use quotation marks to tell

a search that words are an item –

that they must appear together

exactly as they are inside the

quotations.

Making decisions

Now you have more keyword possibilities than before!

How can you possibly choose? Use the following criteria:

What best captures the essence of my topic?

What keywords are most likely to bring back useful

information when I search for them?

Remember that you are always able to change your mind!

That’s the beauty of online searching.

Start with the keywords that seem best, but if that’s not

working, change it up and put in another!

And you’re off!

Take your carefully-chosen keywords and begin your

searching. Plug those beauties into search engines or

databases and watch them shine!

The next step: Combining keywords

To become even more effective in your searching, learn how

to combine keywords and create good search strategies.

Click to visit a Pilgrim Library LibGuide

for more help on search strategies.

Congratulations!

You successfully finished the library tutorial

Keywords: Small but Mighty

If you have any questions about this tutorial,

please get in touch with Pilgrim Library or

email adearmond@defiance.edu.

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