Skip to Main Content
Loyola University Chicago Logo
University Libraries

UNIV 102: Research Matters

Research guide created for Anne Grauer's UNIV 102 course. Direct questions to mclark24@luc.edu or tgolden2@luc.edu

UNIV 102: Library Search Stategy

A well-structured library search strategy will help locate relevant academic sources, including peer-reviewed articles, books, and credible reports.

Topic Example: Social Media as a Political Tool – The Role of Digital Activism in Youth Civic Engagement

1. Identify Key Concepts and Synonyms

Break down the research topic into main concepts and generate related keywords:

Concept

Keywords & Synonyms

Social Media

"social media," "digital media," "online platforms," "Twitter," "Instagram," "TikTok," "Facebook," "YouTube," "digital activism"

Political Tool

"political participation," "civic engagement," "political activism," "youth activism," "grassroots movements"

Youth

"young voters," "Generation Z," "Millennials," "student activism," "youth participation"

Civic Engagement

"voter turnout," "political engagement," "protest movements," "online mobilization"

Searching the Library Catalog

The library catalog is a great place to start your research. Here are some tips to make searching more effective:

  1. Make sure that you sign in. This allows you to see your access options for library materials, save searches, set notifications on saved searches, and save items to your favorites.
  2. Use Boolean operators if you're doing a keyword search. For example:
    • social media AND youth AND politics - the catalog will return only materials that mention all three search terms.
    • politics AND (youth OR "young voters") - the catalog will broaden your search to include materials that discuss either the youth or young voters alongside other instances of the term 'politics.'
    • politics AND youth NOT adult - the catalog will reduce your search results by returning materials that mention politics and youth but do not mention adults.
    • Make sure that you enter Boolean operators in all caps: AND, OR, NOT
  3. Use truncation and/or wildcards. For example:
    • Entering the search term politic* will return results for politics, political, politician, politicians, politicized.
    • Entering the search term wom?n will return results for woman, women
  4. Group your terms using parenthesis to do multiple searches at once. For example:
    • ("young adults" OR "youth") AND "civic engagement"

    • ("social media" OR "Twitter" or "TikKok") AND ("political activism" OR "civic engagement") AND (youth OR "young adults")

  5. Narrow your results to a specific genre, place, or time. For example:
    • "youth civic engagement" AND "United States"