Narrowing Your Topic Using a Library Portal
One of several ways to research your topic is to use a library’s online portal. Using reputable tools to generate narrower ideas also guarantees that the new ideas are supported by credible sources. For example, to narrow down the topic of smoking in movies, you could use your school library’s home page to locate relevant books and access online periodical databases that offer full-text articles evaluated for reliability by librarians and other content experts.
Navigating the Library Portal through Basic Searches
To search the portal of the Brooklyn Public Library, you could find sources through links on the home page: “Library Catalog” to find books, and “Articles and Databases” to find full-text articles.
A basic search within “Articles and Databases” results in multiple hits, all with numerous articles from various databases.
Using Advanced Library Portal Searches
An advanced search allows you to hone in on credible sources that are even more likely to help you. This function will allow you to better distill the specific purpose of your speech and to develop your thesis statement.
Linking search terms cigarettes and movies by the Boolean operator “AND” results in hits containing both these terms.
Limiting the search from 2008 to 2014 ensures that only articles in this period appear.
Limiting the resource categories yields results that cover only the areas on which you want to focus your thesis.