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Steps to Power Searching
- State your topic
- Identify key concepts
- Sketch a Venn Diagram of your search plan
- Use the Turn-Around Chart to consider synonyms
- Select the best resources in which you are likely to find the topic.
- Consider the fields, controlled vocabulary and syntax of the database.
- Run a trial search
- Reflect on what you discover.
- Refine your topic [narrow, exclude, expand] accordingly
- Critically analyze what you find. Have you considered your own bias in the search and excluded other thoughts and opinions?
- Execute the search, combining field based sets where-ever possible.
- Create alerts or RSS feeds so you will be kept up to date on the topic