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First Year / New to the Library

Keyword Searching

In order to search the library's website most effectively it is best to use keyword searching.

Keyword searching is when you pick the main concepts of your research topic and use those concepts to generate a list of

  • Identify your Research Topic
    • What impact does climate change have on Indigenous communities?
  • Identify the main concepts
    • Climate Change and Indigenous Communities
  • You could try conducting a search using these two keywords in Nipissing Search or Canadore Search

library search box with climate change indigenous communities written inside

NOTE: See our tutorials on How Do I Find Articles and How Do I Find Books to learn more about narrowing down your search results


  • Brainstorm related terms and synonyms (a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word)
    • Climate Change = Global Warming, Environmental Change
    • Indigenous Communities = First Nations, Aboriginal, Inuit, Metis

It is likely that you will have to conduct several searches trying different keywords and different combinations of keywords to get good search results.

Some examples of keyword combinations you could try include

  • Environmental Change AND First Nations
  • Global Warming AND Inuit AND Canada (you might want to use a geographic location to help narrow down your results)
  • Climate Change AND First Nations 

NOTE: when actually conducting a search you do not need to include the AND, just type in the keywords

library search bar with environmental change and first nations typed in

TIP:

  • Use 2-3 Keywords when conducting a search
    • 1 keyword will likely give you too many results
    • 4 or more keywords will likely give you no results