learning centre home the information centre institute home page sitemap

analysing your topic

Now you are ready to identify the main concepts or keywords in your topic. These will become the keywords that you will use when searching for information.

Look at our sample topic below. Can you see the important keywords?

To check, roll your mouse pointer over the topic from left to right, and watch the keywords appear in the box below.

Write down the important words that
appear in your assignment topic.

Once you have selected the keywords, make a list of related words and synonyms. In our example they would be:

 

The list of words are your search terms.

tip from your librarian


"Use a thesaurus* to help find synonyms."


*
Indicates glossary item. Click to see the glossary definition.

However, you may not need all of them in your search.