5 Generating Exhibit-Based Search Terms

In English 110, you would have been introduced to the concept of “key terms” and used them in reading and writing strategies in Essays 1 and 2. However, these are not exactly the same as “search terms” which are crucial for library research. Whereas a key term is a central and often recurring concept that is key to expressing (and understanding) an argument, a search term is a word or phrase that helps researchers find the types of sources that are relevant to their area of inquiry. For example, “monsters” and “literacy” are key terms in the articles “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and “Sponsors of Literacy” by Deborah Brandt, respectively. However, they both would be ineffective search terms and lead to hundreds of thousands of results if used as standalone search terms in the library databases. Even though key terms might not make effective search terms, they can still be great starting points for developing search terms.

Watch this short video that demonstrates generating search terms. Then read the following paragraphs for review and complete the exercise.

“Developing Search Terms” by Western University

To generate search terms when using an exhibit-based approach, let’s start by examining the topics you brainstormed in the previous exercise.

We’re going to expand these topics into related ideas and connect them back to the exhibit. These terms will give us flexibility when searching library resources.

As a general rule, the more specific the search terms, the better they function in research. When we’re analyzing a specific creative work, such as a film or a work of literature, the title and author or director make great search terms! So our first round of search terms are really easy. Let’s organize the basic information we have about our exhibit:

This information can help us find articles and books that are written specifically about the exhibit you’re analyzing. But if we want to find books or articles that will help us better understand and analyze the context of this exhibit, we’ll need broader terms to find broader resources.

We’ll start by identifying the key terms in our research question:

Then, for each concept, think of synonyms or related terms. These search terms will give us flexibility when searching library resources. This is also a good time to think about what kind of theoretical lens we might apply to our research topic.

No paper could possibly apply all of these theoretical lenses and make a compelling argument! The idea here is to think about the lenses that you could apply (or that other scholars might have applied already) so that you can thoughtfully select the concepts and lenses that interest you most.

When we’re in class together, we’ll practice searching for different combinations of terms to find scholarship that addresses the productive intersections of concepts that will help us craft a deeper analysis of the exhibit.

Now it’s your turn. Continue using the research question you developed in the exercise from the section titled “Developing a research question.” Don’t worry over trying to perfectly classify your search terms as synonyms, related ideas, or theoretical lenses—the point is to challenge yourself to think of a web of search terms you can use to start searching.