ENG 100 - Conspiracy Theory Summary

3. Choose Your Article

Keywords

As you think about what conspiracy you want to write about, think about what particular words might be found in a good article about that topic.  For instance, if you are writing about the U.S. moon landing in 1969, think of related keywords:

• moon landing AND conspiracy
• Apollo Program OR Project Apollo AND conspiracy
• moon landing AND fake
• moon landing AND hoax
• moon landing AND government coverup

You can also combine "moon landing" with some of your search terms to find articles connecting the two ideas. Unlike Google, our databases work best when using connector terms, such as AND or OR.

*Tip: When using connector terms (also called Boolean Operators), remember that AND means you are searching both terms together. Searching moon landing AND conspiracy will get you results related to both the moon landing and conspiracies.

OR gives you more results. OR tells the database that you want information about the Apollo Program OR Project Apollo, since those are both names for the same term. 

Keywords work best by trial-and-error. Never do only one search. Some keywords will work better than others, and some keywords may lead you to different articles than you found in your first search.  Search the databases with the keywords you selected to find relevant articles. And remember to ask a librarian if you need assistance coming up with keywords or looking for sources.

Databases

To begin your assignment, you will need to find an article to summarize. Below is a list of databases you can use to find an article to summarize.