Today's search engines and databases are advanced enough to find lots of results when you type a question or topic. But there are strategies you can use to optimize those results, making them more relevant to your needs. 

One important strategy is to use keywords, rather than natural language, for your search terms. As opposed to longer sentences and questions, library databases are much better at understanding shorter words and phrases. And web search engines don't really need much more than keywords to find relevant results.

Click the headings below to learn about brainstorming search terms for a keyword search.

Boolean searching is an excellent tool to use to narrow down your search results. Click on the plus signs on the graphic below to learn more, and then test what you know with the matching game.