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HIST 4304: Riddles of Rome

Narrow Down Your Topic

You can narrow down a topic through the 6 questions:

  • Who?
  • What?
  • When?
  • Where?
  • Why?
  • So What?  (Historical significance of the event)

Keywords

Our library databases have great resources, including thousands of peer-reviewed articles.  However, the databases are very particular about the words you enter.   The results will contain the words exactly how you spelled them.  For example, a search for "political"   will not find books or articles that say "politics" or "politicians" instead.

Also, sometimes the words researchers use are not words that we would use in our everyday life.  That is why it is really important to brainstorm possible keywords before you start searching. 

Not finding what you need?  Check sources you already have for possible keywords.  

Check with a librarian or your professor for additional suggestions.

Phrase Searching

You can search for specific phrases by using quotation marks.  This works in both Google and our databases.  This is very helpful, because otherwise, your keywords could be anywhere in the webpage or article.

Phrase Searching

Truncation

So, our databases and our catalog are picky about what you type in.  What can you do? 

Truncation allows you to use a symbol, for our catalog and most databases it is an asterisk *, to search for various endings of words.  So, a search for climat* will find climate, climatology, climates, climatic, etc.