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Research 101: Finding Books & Ebooks: Searching for Books from ODU

Get the basics on books & library catalogs!

Looking for Books on a Topic? How to Generate Good Keywords

Learn how to (1) brainstorm your search terms and (2) carry out a good keyword search in the ODU Library Catalog.

We'll start with a broad topic: the virtue of honesty

Brainstorming search terms includes thinking of:

  1. Synonyms and related terms
  2. Opposites (Antonyms)
  3. Applications

Let's brainstorm! What words can you think of that we might use in a search? Select each of the options below to find out.
 

  • truthfulness
  • truth
  • integrity
  • dishonesty
  • favrication
  • lying
  • relationships
  • business
  • communication
  • academic integrity

Back to our topic: the virtue of honesty

Here are some sample searches. Click on the links to see the searches and the different results you can retrieve:

TIP #1: Use AND in all capital letters to connect your terms in order to bring up results with BOTH of those terms

TIP #2: It's often most effective to use nouns as search terms

Searching by Keyword in the ODU Library Catalog

This guide will take you through the process of searching for items in the ODU Library Catalog, including choosing appropriate keywords and narrowing and expanding your search results.

Looking for Something Specific? How to Search by Title & Author

Take the Challenge!

Assume you are looking for books that address the impact of art on social change. Can you answer the questions below? Click on them to view the answers & see if you know how!

Since you are looking for books concerning art and social change, you can simply use both of those terms in the library catalog: art, social change

Now choose the correct way to format your search:

Sorry--Wrong answer! Adding “OR” to your search alerts One Search that you are searching for either the term art or the term social change, but not necessarily both of them together. And you need to add quotations around the phrase social change to let One Search know you want to search those terms as a phrase, not separate words.
Sorry--Wrong answer! You don’t want to do a title search because you are not looking for a specific title of a book. You are looking for a variety of books on a specific subject.

Correct! You would want to do a keyword search in the Library Catalog because you are browsing for a number of books on a particular subject, not a specific title.

Choosing “AND” tells One Search to look for both art and social change together in the Library Catalog.

While not always necessary, adding quotations around social change tells One Search that you want to search for those terms as an exact phrase; this is helpful if you don't want to deal with a lot of results. Our Library Catalog through One Search doesn't always need the quotations though. It's often best to try with and without and see which one works better for your particular topic

Okay, now that you have your initial search terms, it's time to brainstorm other search terms (synonyms) that you could use to find books related to the topic of art and social change.

Here are some of the other search terms you could try:

  • media, theater, painting, “visual art,” sculpture, music, artist, poetry
  • social movements, activism

There are many additional words you can try. It doesn’t hurt to just experiment a bit and see if you find any books that might be relevant to your research.