 With so much available online, searching for information for your assignments can seem overwhelming. Let's say you have the following assignment topic. Discuss attitudes on the use of renewable energy in rural Australia. Typing your question into Google or the library catalogue is not the best way to search. Mapping out your search can be a good place to start. Think about your question and try and identify what the main ideas are. This will help you to understand your topic and make searching easier. Ask yourself what you need to know to answer your assignment. Ask yourself what are your key concepts you could use in a search. You do not need to search for task words. These tell you what you need to do in your assignment. But they are not the focus of it. You might want to put some concepts together as phrases. But you might search for other concepts on their own. Think about the concepts you are using and whether there are other words you could use with similar meaning in your search. Are there any common acronyms you could search for? This is important as not everyone refers to the same ideas in the same way. As you're searching, you may discover other words you could use to expand or change your search. Start to think about how you could incorporate these to build a better search. And and or will help you to do this. Use and to connect different concepts together, like rule and Australia. Use or to connect similar concepts or synonyms together, like solar or wind. Using and will focus your search. Joining concepts together with and means you will have a more specific search. Using or will expand your search as you are now searching for similar concepts and you will have a broader search with more results. Think about your searching as you go. Are you finding relevant results? Are there other search terms you could use? Are you getting too many results? Or not enough? Remember, searching is not a linear process. You will change your search as you discover more information and start to draft your assignment. Planning your search will save you time and give you better results. If you need help, just ask.