 In this video, we are going to discuss choosing keywords that we can use to search for information in the library databases. Keywords are words or terms used to describe your topic or parts of your topic. Google and many other web-based search engines use smart searching technology to deliver search results that the technology predicts you will click on or want to see. When using a search engine like Google, I can type out my entire question in the search box and I will see relevant results. The databases available through the libraries do not have smart searching built in yet. If I was to try and type out my research question in the database search field, the database will focus on the keywords and the question. The database will often ignore or skip small and common words like because, of, the, a, and if to name a few. Because these words will show up in almost every article in the database and you'll be overwhelmed with search results. The lack of smart searching in the databases also shows up in what keywords you type into a search field. For example, if I were to misspell a word while searching the database, the database will try to find that word the exact way I misspelled it and would probably not get any search results. So how do I come up with keywords to use in the databases to find information? You might have a lot of knowledge about your topic and can think of a few keywords off the top of your head to use in a database search. If you are not familiar with your topic, you can find keywords and sources like your textbooks, Wikipedia articles about your topic, websites, and other research articles to name a few. Let's look at how we can find keywords using a Wikipedia article. In this example, I have an assignment to find information in the library databases on my prospective career. Using a Wikipedia article, let's find some keywords we can use on our database search. For this assignment, I want to find information about being a librarian in a college library. Here you can see some examples of keywords I could use to find articles on specific things librarians do in their job. If we scroll down, we will find a section titled academic library. So we already have one good keyword, librarian, to use in our database search. So let's find some other keywords from this article. The first keyword or term that stands out is academic library. I will write that one down on a list so I can remember it later. Some other good keywords I can use in my search are the words college, university, or even institution of post-secondary education. These are some good keywords or phrases because they are describing similar things using different words, also known as synonyms. In this example, college and university both describe higher educational institutions. We can interchange these words in our search to see how the combination changes the search results. Let's recap. Be sure to choose keywords that describe or are related to the topic you want to research. Check the spelling of your keywords if you get zero search results in the databases. The databases do not have a spell checker or smart searching technology to understand what you are looking for. Finally, think of synonyms or other words that mean the same thing as your keyword. Using a different combination of keywords in the database search will often return different search results. If you need help coming up with keywords for your topic, please contact the IRSC librarians. We are always happy to help you with your research.