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You Are Here: Pedagogy>Communication and Information Literacy>Information Literacy> Define your Search

Pre-Searching

Preparing for a Search

What do you need?

Are you looking for a couple of facts?
Are you looking for in depth information on a small topic?
This will help define how and where you search. Sometimes you need to start by getting some background information so you can decide on what really interests you.

Do you have a large topic and need to narrow it down?

Try the Google Wonder Wheel - download a how-to

Try Yippy - Yippy is a directory that clusters results - by clouds, sources or sites. The clusters will give subtopics that may help narrow the topic.

Questions

What is the main research question?
What sub-questions does this question lead to?

Tools

Graphic Organizers can help you develop the sub-questions and organize your thinking. A number are available on this site.

You will need to login with your LEARN username and password.
Once you are logged in, click on the green menu item: Focus Online
Explore the CCC-1 tools A couple are listed below.
- Q3 The three questions of information gathering can help direct the research
- KWL chart (Know Want to Know and Learned) 3 Questions and Answerscan help a student develop the question s/he needs answered to explore the main research question

Concept Mapping Brainstorm ideas coming from the main question - this will help you decide on what aspect of the research question you wish to delve into further.

Creating mindmaps or webs on paper can help narrow a topic and select sub-questions
Online Tools are also available

Develop Key Words for your Search

What are the key words and phrases in the questions (important words)?
One technique you can use is to highlight the important words in your sub-questions.

For each question you will want to develop a search string (the words you will use for searching

Think about

using singular and plurals
are there alternate spellings (e.g. colour and color)
are there other words that mean about the same thing (synonyms)
- Find synonyms
- - use a thesaurus (a book)
  - online
  - Visuwords - complex thesaurus for upper secondary

* Photo: Remnants, by David Goehring, adapted from Flickr licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.