This page provides information on getting started on your assignment and keyword searching strategies.

• Why use the library (video)
• Steps to a successful assignment
• What are keywords?
• Keyword searching strategies (video)
• APA Referencing (video)
• Assignment 3 - Coaching e-portfolio
• Transcript for keyword searching strategies 

1. Collect all your information about the assignment.

• the handout on the assignment
• the type of resources required for your Reference List e.g. books, journal articles
• notes from classes on how to do the assignment

2. Analyse and prepare

• identify the Required Reading 
• identify keywords & search the Library for additional resources e.g. books, journal articles (see the boxes below to know what are keywords and for some keyword search strategies)

3. Read for Information

• read Required Reading and make notes
• read the additional articles etc for information not in the Required Reading
• prepare each Reference as you read it, ensure it is written in the APA referencing style. See the APA referencing guide for further assistance

4. Start writing

• collect notes from your reading and start to build your assignment
• write the correct References for each of your readings for your Reference List

• Newspaper articles

  • ANZ Newsstand - contains articles from Australian and New Zealand national and regional newspapers. The coverage begins in 1996.

  • Factiva - provides Access to more than 14,000 sources (such as newspapers, journals, magazines, news and radio transcripts, etc) from 152 countries in 22 languages, including more than 120 continuously updated newswires. Australian publications include The Age, The Herald Sun, Sydney Morning Herald, West Australian, The Mercury, Business Review Weekly, Bulletin, Australian Financial Review and The Adelaide Advertiser.

  • The Conversation - contains news and views from academic and research communities.

• Videos 

  • Kanopy (access to a broad range of educational streamed (online) video titles, allows sharing/embedding videos and create clips and playlists.

Key words are words in a question that tell you the approach you should take when answering an assignment question. 

Keywords can include:

Transcript for keyword searching strategies

Refer to the APA Referencing guide for detailed information on how to reference your source using APA style.

Before you start researching on a topic…it is vital that you identify the keywords and apply some of the search techniques to retrieve the best results!

So what are keywords?

Keywords are search terms that represent main ideas and concepts in an assignment question or topic.

Library database looks for keywords anywhere in the record such as title, abstract, keywords and subject headings.

The first step is to identify keywords or ideas from the assignment question or topic.

For instance, if your assignment topic is ‘What effects do physical activities have on the overall health of women?’

Your keywords or concepts  are

Physical activity                 Health                                                   Women

Now Step 2 is to think of some of the synonyms or alternative words or related words.

The third step is to use the search tipsor strategies to make your search more efficient!

Such as using Truncation, Wildcard and Boolean operators

The Truncation symbol represented by an asterisk finds a term with various endings in a library search or the databases.

A Wildcard symbol represented by the hash # allows you to find words with alternate spellings. For instance, if you want to find terms containing both the British spelling and the American spelling.

Combine keywords in a search using the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT

Use of the operators AND and NOT will narrow a search while the OR operator will broaden it!

If you are not getting the right kind of results change your keywords or refinements to broaden out or further narrow the results.

For further information, you can contact us online or talk to a library staff member if on campus.

End of video