Identifying Keywords

Selecting terms for database searching (and more).

Keyword • Definitions

Keyword: A significant word in the abstract, title (1), or text (2) of a work (1) that is used as a descriptor (1). Can be considered a type of search term (ALA Glossary of Library Information Science, 2013)

Keyword: A significant or memorable word or term in the title, abstract, or text of an information resource that indicates its subject and is often used as a search term (ACRL-IS Glossary, 2018)

Keyword: significant term found in a document, in its title or in an abstract, which identifies subject content (Concise Dictionary of LIS, 2000).

Exploring & Identifying Keywords

Keywords are the most important words or concepts in your research topic or question.  Tips for selecting / identifying keywords for a search include:

• Identify the most important 2 to 4 words or concepts from your research question or topic.
• A quick way identify important words or concepts is to choose the most important nouns.
• Develop a list of alternate words with the same or similar meaning.
• Use a thesaurus, dictionary, research starter, article subject terms, Wikipedia, or conduct a google search to find additional terms.
• Take time to identify what the words mean to you as a researcher.

Keywords & Databases

Databases will search for keywords in articles and return options to review. Sometimes the results support your search, other times they miss the mark.

Why? Keep in mind that:

• Keywords are selected by users and most natural language options.
• Subject terms are defined by individual databases.
• Author keywords are supplied by article authors for their work.

When searching a database, these words are not always the same.

Exploring GenAI for Keywords

Take time to review the AI terms from session 1.

ChatGPT: "An artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that uses natural language processing to create humanlike conversational dialogue" (Tech Target, What is ChatGPT).

Perplexity: "An AI-powered research and conversational search engine that answers queries using natural language predictive text. It generates answers using sources from the web and cites links within the text response. (Perplexity AI).