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 food do I want to focus on?

What interests me about this food?

Why is/was it so popular and how has it influenced society? Was it a positive or negative influence?

As you start to narrow this down into a 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

It helps to surround search phrases with quotation marks. This lets the computer know you are searching for that specific phrase. For example, for general background material on the show, you could search:

"Tater Tots"

Then, if you want to find more specific information, you can combine search terms to find specific aspects about the popularity of Unlike Google, our databases work best when using connector terms, such as and or or. Here are some examples:

"Tater Tots" and history or origin

"Tater Tots" and potato sales statistics

"Tater Tots" and popularity

"Tater Tots" and international consumption

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.