Defining keywords

Broader and narrower search terms

Is there a broader or narrower subject that might include your topic, question or problem? Remember our topic is "Aids in the workplace."

A broader subject might cover things like: A narrower subject might be:

immunological deficiency syndromes

virus-induced immunosuppression

HIV infections

infectious diseases

aids

work safety

cost of aids in workplace

prevalence of aids in workplace

You must identify as many as possible such broader and narrower terms. They will help you when you do your search. Using different words will retrieve different information, therefore use all possible options when you search for information.

After searches were done on the Library on-line catalogue on some of the words identified above, the following was found:

Definition:
Library on-line catalogue
The Library on-line catalogue is a database of titles of all the books, journals and audio- visual resources available in the Library.

It is clear that you get different results (varying number of "hits") from different words used in the searches. That is why it is so important to identify and follow up every possible word related to your topic.

Remember to keep any printouts of your searches, make notes of the resources found and keep information for your bibliographic records already at this early stage. See reading and making notes in step 5 to help you with this.