 In this video, we are going to discuss choosing keywords that we can use to search for information in the library's river search. 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 in the question. The databases will ignore or skip small and common words like because, of, the, a, an, if, to name a few, because these words will show up in almost every article in the database. 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 databases will try to find that word the exact way I misspelled it, so how do I come up with keywords to use in my search to find information? When you are conducting research on literature, your keywords can include the title of the story, play, or poem you were writing about, the author's name, a name of a character, and the themes and the literary work to name a few. We are going to use the IRSC RiverSearch to find relevant full-text articles about a literary work. To access RiverSearch, log into your MyPioneer portal account. Once you are logged in, you should see a link for the IRSC library databases. Click on that link and you will be taken to the RiverSearch page. If you get any sort of error after you click on the library databases link, please email us at library at IRSC.edu. RiverSearch is set up to search the library databases for information. When you get to the RiverSearch page, you will see a search box on the page and a link that says Advanced Search to the right of the box. We are going to click on the Advanced Search link in order to have more options for our keyword search. For this demonstration, I want to find articles on the imagery used in William Carlos Williams' poem, The Red Wheelbarrow. In the first search line, I will type in the keywords, The Red Wheelbarrow. For phrases with more than one word, I put the words in quotation marks. This tells the search to keep all of those words together as a phrase. In the second search line, I will type the author's name William Carlos Williams. Because I want to find articles that talk about the imagery in the poem, I will click on Add a New Line and then type the keyword imagery. One thing to remember is the more keywords or phrases you use in the search, the more focused your search results will be and you will get fewer search results to have to sort through. I will start my search with these keywords. You can always adjust your search after you start looking at the first set of search results. I also suggest leaving the drop-down selections in the search filters as the default any field and contains. Changing these filters will change how the search looks for articles. Changing these filters will change how the search looks for articles. For example, if I change the any field drop-down to title, the search will only look for keywords in the title of the articles. The full text of the article would not be searched. Therefore, if an article has information about the Red Wheelbarrow, but that phrase isn't included in the title of the article, you would not see it in the search results. Once you find an article that sounds useful, you will want to click on the title to see the detailed information page. On this page, you will find links to the full text of the article in one of the IRSC library databases. Click on any of the links to access the full article. You can also email the article information to yourself on this page and even see a citation for the article. If you need any help coming up with keywords for your topic, please contact the IRSC librarians. We are always happy to help you with your research.