Essay Writing: Choosing/Narrowing Your Topic

The Monroe College Guide to Essay Writing presents the information necessary to write effective essays.

Boolean Operators

The Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT are often used to combine keywords when searching research databases. Use of these operators can make your search more focused, thus yielding more precise search results. But before using the operators, it's necessary to understand how they actually work.

Boolean Searching

Keep in mind that the connectors AND and NOT generally limit your search (decreases the number of hits) and the connector OR expands it (increases the number of hits). So the following strategies naturally follow:

If you are retrieving too many records on your topic, try adding another search term with the connector AND.
If you are retrieving too many records on an unrelated topic, try eliminating a word with the connector NOT
If you are retrieving too few records on your topic, try adding another search term with the connector OR.

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Advanced Search Methods: Truncation / Wildcards / Controlled Vocabulary

Truncation

Truncation allows you to search the "root" form of a word with all its different endings by adding a symbol to the end of a word. Example: typing in bank* will retrieve results with these words: bank, banks, banking, bankers, bankruptcy The most common truncation symbol is the asterisk * but databases vary. Check the database Help section to find the correct truncation symbol. Example: bank* bank! bank# bank? See the sample search below for results using "bank*" in a Discovery search.

How to Choose and Narrow Your Research Topic

Choose and Narrow Down Research Topic

Finding Newspaper Articles in the Library Databases

In order to use the sources listed below, you'll need to log in to the Library Databases.

Go to MyMonroe and select the Library Resources Gadget Library Resources Icon

(Login details here.)

You might want to try:.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times This link opens in a new window
This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
Coverage: 1851 - 2020
Gale OneFile News This link opens in a new window
Access major U.S. and international newspapers online to search articles instantly by title, headline, date, or other fields
Newspaper Source This link opens in a new window
Newspaper Source provides cover-to-cover full text for more than 40 (U.S.) & international newspapers. The database also contains selective full text for 389 regional (U.S.) newspapers. In addition, full text television & radio news transcripts are also provided.
U.S. Newsstream This link opens in a new window
U.S. Newsstream enables users to search the most recent premium U.S. news content, as well as archives which stretch back into the 1980s featuring newspapers, newswires, blogs, and news sites in active full-text format. For academic and public libraries, U.S. Newsstream offers exclusive access to the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and co-exclusive access (with Factiva) to The Wall Street Journal. U.S. Newsstream also offers one of the largest collections of local and regional newspapers, and is cross-searchable on the ProQuest platform.

Coverage: 1980 - current

A Monroe College Research Guide

THIS RESEARCH OR "LIBGUIDE" WAS PRODUCED BY THE LIBRARIANS OF MONROE COLLEGE