Apparel Production and Merchandising

Use your research question to design your search strategy.

• Step 1: Identify the major concepts of your question.

• Step 2: Identify synonyms, acronyms, plurals, and professional language for each concept.

• Step 3: Identify resources/databases to search.

• Step 4: Create a search string (by combining keywords) that is appropriate for the database/resource.  

• Step 5: Run and refine your search.

• Step 6: Use the information the database provides to refine your search strategy (Like adding subject headings and special characters).

Use the research plan document (linked below) to guide you through the search process.

Choosing the right keywords is essential to getting the best search result which leads to the high-quality, on-topic sources you need. Learn how to generate useful keywords and search in library databases with the video below.

Use Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT) to combine your search terms. Watch this video below on Boolean operators