One of the best ways to keep track of your research is to keep all your notes in one place, in a research log. Your log may be digital (a folder on your computer with files for notes, lists of keywords, and your working bibliography) or analog (a notebook with pockets for copies of sources works well).

Listing Keywords

Finding useful sources depends on determining the right keywords— words or phrases that describe your topic — to use while searching catalogs, databases, and the Internet. Start your list of keywords by noting the main words from your research question or thesis statement. Look for useful terms in your search results, and use these to expand your list. Then add synonyms (or words with a similar meaning) to expand your list. Keep in mind that different databases use different terms, and terms that work well for one subject might not be successful in another. For example, databases covering education and psychology might index sources on some of the same subjects, but they might not use the same keywords.

For example, student Cristina Dinh might have started with a term like home schooling. She might have added home education or home study. After reading an article in an encyclopedia about her subject, she might have added student-paced education or autonomous learning to expand her scope. After consulting the thesaurus in ERIC, a database focusing on education, she might have added parents as teachers; after consulting the thesaurus in the database PSYCArticles, she might have added nontraditional education.