Skip to Main Content

Tutorial: Food Stories

A class guide for the tutorial class "Food for Thought"

Finding the right Keywords

Our search results can change dramatically depending on the search terms we use, so it is important to experiment with different words and phrase to get relevant results. Follow the below steps to choose which keywords you should use: 

1. Determine your research question or topic. 

What types of food did early pioneers eat while traveling on the Oregon Trail? 

2. Identify the main ideas, keywords or concepts of your question or topic. Think about what parameters we are giving our research. 

What types of food did early pioneers eat while traveling on the Oregon Trail

3. From the main ideas, build a key word list of possible other words people might use to describe the concepts or terms used in our research question. 

"Food" "Pioneers" "Oregon Trail"
rations colonists Great Migration of 1843
nutrition settlers US westward expansion
rations migrants emigrant trails of the US

We can also use this table to refine our research. For example, maybe we want to see what food the pioneers bought before the trip. In that case, maybe we won't use the term "food", which is general, and use term "dry goods" or "provisions". 

 

Database Pro Tips