Teaching Social Studies

Developing a search query can be a challenge. Here are some tips to help.

• Check out a database's Thesaurus to find appropriate keywords for the item for which you are looking. 

• A longer search query helps databases retrieve more specific resources

• Using "OR" between terms will retrieve more results

• Using "AND" between terms will retrieve less results
   
• Use a * (star) truncation symbol, which acts as a wildcard to broaden a search by finding variations of a word's ending, e.g. psych*
   
• Use " " (quotation marks) to tell the database to treat the enclosed words as an exact phrase, e.g. "educational psychology"
   
• Add Canad* or province name(s) to your search strategy as a separate concept to narrow the search results. (Canad* will search for Canadian or Canada.) For example: Canad* OR Alberta OR “British Columbia” OR “Prince Edward Island”...

Sample Database Search

• Social Studies:
  • "social studies" OR "social sciences"
•  Geography and Natural Resources:
  • "natural resource*" OR forest* OR water OR river* OR lake* OR petrol* OR oil OR conservation OR environmental* OR geograph* OR mountain* OR agricultur* OR prairies
• Government and Democracy:
  • democra* OR government*
• Globalization:
  • global* OR "world citizenship" OR Internationalisation OR multicultural*
• Nationalism:
  • nationalis* OR "national socialis*" OR "national identit*" OR "National characteristics"
• Ideologies:
  • ideolog* OR individualis* OR collectivis* OR liberalis* OR conservatis* OR Marxis* OR socialis* OR capitalis* OR fascis* OR communis* OR montesquieu OR "john locke" OR environmentalis* OR expansionis* OR authoritarian* OR dictatorship* OR terrorism

Combine your subject keyword terms with JUVENILE to limit to resources appropriate for K-12 when you search the Library Catalogue.

• Juvenile Literature = non-fiction
• Juvenile Fiction = fiction
• Juvenile = fiction and non-fiction

For example, an Advanced Search of the Library Catalogue for non-fiction publications of immigrant Canadian children's literature could look like the following. 

• immigra* OR refugee*
  AND
  Canad*
  AND
  "juvenile literature"