1e. Refine Your Topic
Narrow It Down
You’ve chosen a topic, and you have several sources about it. But you now have too much information to fit into a paper of the required length.
It’s time to refine.
How to Refine Your Topic
Too Little or Too Much?
Too Much Information?
Your topic is too broad.
Narrow it by:
Time period
2000–2012; pre-Independence, etc.
Geographic location
Oklahoma, Alva, North America, etc.
Population
Age, race, sex, or other group
A smaller piece of the topic:
- Genre
- Event
- Aspect
- Discipline or subject
Too Little Information?
Your topic is too narrow.
Broaden it by:
Exploring related issues
Identifying wider implications
Identifying the key players
Comparing or contrasting with another topic
Expanding the:
- Time period covered
- Population considered
- Geographic area discussed
Search Techniques
Boolean Logic
To adjust the amount of information you find, combine search terms with Boolean operators: And, or, and not.
Boolean logic is an extension of algebra and classical logic described by George Boole. His theory informs all programming languages and is incorporated into internet search engines and library catalogs. Venn diagrams, such as those shown below, illustrate Boolean operations.
And narrows a search. Both terms connected by and will appear in the results. You get only results in which both terms occur.
Examples:
internet and security
television and violence
Or expands a search. Either or both of the terms connected by or will appear in the results. You get all results in which either term occurs.
Examples:
college or univeristy
teenager or adolescent
Not narrows a search by excluding a term. Records containing the search term preceded by not will be eliminated. This removes irrelevant results.
Examples:
java not coffee
bears not football
Note: Some online databases, including our catalog, require you to type Boolean operators in all caps. Otherwise, the database will treat an operator as just another search term!
Truncation & Wildcards
Truncation or wildcard symbols can broaden your search to look for word variations.
Truncation
Truncation retrieves various word endings and spellings.
Common characters used for truncation are question marks, exclamation marks, or asterisks, depending on the database or search engine.
Enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end. Your results will include any word beginning with that root.
Example: educat* will retrieve educate, educating, educational, education, educator, and educators.
Wildcards
Substitute a symbol for one letter in the middle of a word.
This tells the database to search for any variation of a word.
Using one wildcard symbol will replace one character, two symbols will replace two characters, and so forth.
Example: wom#n will retrieve woman and women.