Pharmacy 1100

Knowing what you are looking for and why you need it is key to being efficient! Here are strategies that may help:

1) Topic development. Your questions may start broad and then narrow until there is enough information to inform an opinion, experiment, or assignment. Or they may be too specific and turn up few search results. A good rule-of-thumb is that if you are getting too many results, add words. If you are getting too few results, use fewer words (or use alternative terms).

2) Are you trying to be comprehensive or not? Comprehensiveness is a high (but not unattainable) standard. If you really want to be comprehensive, implement tools that make that easier, such as a search tracking spreadsheet and a citation management system. 

3) 'Follow the footnotes' of articles that are on-topic. This means that you search their bibliographies for pertinent books and articles. 

4) A search tracking spreadsheet can help anyone who is tackling a large project. It's simple a spreadsheet (or other document) that records the date, the search term, the database, what filters were used, and how many results you turned up. This allows you to know what search term combinations might be working and to abandon poor search terms or databases with confidence. 

5) Implement an citation organization system. My favorite is Zotero, as it is free, can easily link to websites (as well as import articles, etc.), and automatically signs you in as on-campus when you are not on campus. 

6) Use the limiters and filters in the databases as they will help screen out items. 

Google's algorithm incudes a preference for the most popular pages and what people in your region are interested in, which usually isn't helpful for doing academic research. However, using the modifiers below can significantly improve your web searching results. NOTE: Some of these modifiers will also work in other databases, but you have to try individually.