3. Narrow Your Topic

Once you've done some initial background reading, it's time to narrow down your topic to what you really want to write about. Remember your assignment requirements and consider what you've read thus far.

Ask yourself:

What aspect of the topic do I want to focus on?

What interests me about the topic?

As you start to narrow this down into a rough draft thesis, you'll want to continue to look for more sources. As you read, you might tweak or adjust your topic/thesis. In order to help you find more related sources about your topic, you'll want to identify keywords to help you search.

Keywords

As you think about what concepts you want to write about, think about what particular words might be found in a good source about that topic. Unlike Google, our databases don't do well with searches using whole sentences. Use only the essential words for searching.

genetically modified food

food waste

You can combine your terms with "and." If you need to list terms that mean the same, you can use "or" to connect the terms. If you are looking for a phrase, put phrases in quotation marks, so the computer will search for those words together. For example, if you are writing about landfills and food waste, you might search:

landfills and "food waste"

dumps or landfills and "food waste"

Using quotation marks around phrases like "food waste" tells the database or search engine that you want to search those two words together as a phrase (rather than two separate words). You can do this with any phrase - such as:

"local food movement"

Once you've narrowed your topic, expand your search to focus on those factors that you're discussing in your paper for example:

"junk food" and health and effects

"junk food" and government regulation

"junk food" and obesity

soda or chips and health

"Fast food" or junk food" and health and effects

excess sugar and obesity

"junk food" and Childhood obesity

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.