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ENGL 2 - Spring 2024: Prof. Eubanks: Research Basics

Research Basics-Getting Started

Research basics for Professor Eubanks's English 2 Class. This video covers topics, resources, brainstorming, and Boolean operators and gets you ready for searching the library databases.

Boolean Operators/Combination Searching

Boolean operators help you with searching in our database. I have 3 of them below with examples. Remember to keep your search terms simple to just the keywords that relate to the subject of your research and you should be able to find good articles for your assignment.

Quotation Marks: To search multiple worded search terms together.
       "Monterey Peninsula College" 
       "Kingdom of Heaven" 
       "Ridley Scott"

AND: To tell the database that these search terms must appear in your results and to help you narrow your search.
       "Kingdom of Heaven" AND humanism 
       "Kingdom of Heaven" AND criticism

OR: When you want to search for either term and help expand your search.
       "Kingdom of Heaven" AND (9/11 OR terrorism)
       "Kingdom of Heaven" AND criticism OR interpretation

**You do not  have to put the parenthesis around your terms...this is called nesting and shows you the related terms