You can identify useful search terms by building on your research question or thesis statement (see Chapter 14) or by using a range of idea-generating techniques, such as brainstorming, freewriting, looping, and clustering. Dwight Haynes, for example, used freewriting to generate ideas for his searches. Then he highlighted promising keywords and phrases.

I’m most interested in finding sources that can help me understand why some approaches to reducing college drinking — and binge drinking in particular, although it’s not the only problem (date rape, drunk driving, and falling out of windows or trees, for example, are related to too much drinking) — work better than others. What’s been done by schools with successful programs? How much do those programs cost? And why haven’t schools made more progress on this problem? Is it just something that college students have to go through? But if that’s the case, why do so many students swear off drinking altogether — or maybe it’s just a case of extremes all around, with some people drinking too much and some people swearing off it even though they wouldn’t mind having a beer now and then?

You can also generate search terms by using your research question or thesis statement as a starting point. One student, for example, typed her research question in a word-processing program, formatted the most important words and phrases in color, and then brainstormed a list of related words and phrases.

What barriers stand in the way of widespread use of hydrogen fuel in the United States?