 Identify keywords and phrases for your information search, a short video tutorial. In this video, we'll discuss extracting key concepts from your research question or thesis, as well as deriving a viable collection of key terms and short phrases to get you started in your quest for research resources. At this point, you should already have a research question in mind. If you haven't already, go ahead and pause this video now to write your question or thesis down. You got it? Great! We'll be relying on this to get us started on this very fundamental stage of your research journey. Now that you've written your research question or thesis out, read it back to yourself. I like to read it out loud. As you're reading, think about and write down the key issues or concepts. I have this very early concept of a research thesis as an example. Many people do not know who James P. Johnson is. In those who do, more often know of Johnson as a jazz pianist, not as a classical music composer and performer. This limited understanding of the full breadth of Johnson's skill and talent persists today due to fundamentally biased cultural expectations about race, time, and musical genre. So now, we need to find a way to get some research terms out of this very large thesis statement. We essentially need to distill this broad thesis statement into a few core concepts. In this example, we have James P. Johnson, racial bias, musical genre, and time as our four core concepts. Alright, so let's focus this a little bit. It's time to take these broad concepts and break them out into a collection of very specific keywords and their synonyms. Essentially, we're trying to think about as many terms as we possibly can to say essentially the same thing. Okay, so let's take a look at this one concept at a time. James P. Johnson is obviously a search term as well as a concept. We can also add the term biography next to his name. Our concept of racial bias can be broken down into race, racism, and racist. Musical genre is of course about music, but more specifically, it's about classical music, art music, jazz, and ragtime. Our final concept of time is defined by the context of our topic, which in this case is the 20th century. Alright, at this point, I just want to pause for a moment to remind you that research is a process. If your first collection of search terms didn't go so well, that is completely normal. Just go back and see if you can shorten any words, identify any new keywords or synonyms, or use them in different combinations. Once you start finding viable resources, use the abstracts, table of contents, and subject headings to identify additional keywords to use in new searches. Finally, as you begin to dig into your topic and learn more about it, you'll undoubtedly discover new terms and ways of describing the issues. Always go back and try a new search with your new found knowledge and understanding to reveal resources potentially missed in your earlier work. Essentially, just be persistent and creative and you will get it. Thank you so much for spending time with us on this tutorial. Don't hesitate to connect with us if you still have questions using any of the options you see on the right side of your screen. You can also schedule a consultation with a research specialist by following the URL on your screen. Thank you and good luck on your research.