The Myth of the Perfect Search

“How do I know I did a good search?”

“I just wanted to make sure I was doing the search right.”

We hear things like this from students often when they call us for research help. As a librarian, I’m here to tell you something very important: There’s no such thing as the perfect search.

“None of these articles fit my topic.”

We also hear this sometimes after helping a student build a keyword search for their topic. Yet, sometimes the articles DO fit, the titles just aren’t very descriptive or maybe a few articles are approaching the topic differently than the student wanted. Again, there’s no such thing as the perfect search.

So, how do you know if you’ve done a search that will get you the results you need?

Here are some tips while searching and some things to look for in the results:

1. Don’t be too specific with your search terms OR your search expectations.
Databases don’t always understand what you’re trying to find. Broaden your search terms a bit or break up the words in your topic. Check out this guide on building keyword searches.
Also, don’t expect that the first three articles you see in the results will match your topic exactly. You might have to find several articles that are related to your topic to build and compile the research you need.

2. Are you using words that could have more than one meaning? Try to use the best words for what you want.
Try using a “subject term search” or use what is often called the “thesaurus.” These tools help you find the best words to use for your topic. Check out this guide for help.

3. Look at the abstracts of the results you get. Read them slowly and carefully to find out what the articles are really about. Titles can be decieving.

4. Try modifying your search. Are you finding the same articles on that topic over and over? Perhaps you’re finding all there is to find!

5. Try searching in another database too. Some topics aren’t “one stop shop” topics and may need to be explored in more than one database to find articles specific to that topic.

Finally, be flexible with your topic. Sometimes we expect to find plenty of research articles on our topic only to find that most researchers have been approaching it from a vastly different perspective than we imagined. Or perhaps we find that our assumption about the topic is incorrect. Maybe we’re finding articles with findings directly opposite to what we expected. It’s important to learn from the research we do and be willing to take in what we find with an open mind.

It might change your topic a bit, but it will also be an important part of your learning process!  That is, after all, what research is all about.

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