Tuesday Tips: Developing Keywords

Keywords are important terms, concepts, or phrases you can use to help you search for  information. If your keywords aren’t right, you’ll have trouble finding what what you need.

When developing keywords, try the following:

• Underline Your Thesis: Look at your thesis or research statement and underline the most important words, ideas, and topics. These are your starter keywords. 
• Find Synonyms: Don’t get tunnel vision and only focus on the keywords in your thesis. Look for synonyms to those words. You can use a website like Thesaurus.com or a print thesaurus to help you find related terms. The reason you should look for synonyms is that the keywords you use might not be the keywords an author/creator uses even though you're both looking at the same thing.
• Expand Your Idea: Expand your topic a bit. What are the overarching ideas or topics that cover your topic? If you want to research gentrification in a local neighborhood, it’s worth looking for articles on gentrification in a specific city or gentrification trends overall. 
• Narrow Your Idea: Find an example you can use. If you’re researching social media, pick a specific platform like Twitter.
• Specific Examples: If you are writing about a general idea, it can be useful to include specific examples of that idea as keywords. For instance, if you're looking at Black authors, you could include Octavia E. Butler as a specific example.
• Related Ideas: You can also look for keywords that are related to but not directly about your topic. If you’re looking up healthy eating techniques, you might want to find articles on other healthy habits like exercise or sleep. Information you need may be included in an article on another topic.

---