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GEO 4953/5603: Physical Hydrogeology (Datta)
• Course research guide for GEO 4953/5603: Physical Hydrogeology with Saugata Datta
Using Keywords: Why, What, & How
Keywords: what you type is what you get from a database:
- Why: When it comes to searching for relevant articles on a topic of interest, you cannot type a whole sentence into a search box but a few keywords.
- What: Keywords – the words that can significantly, best describe your topic of interest.
- Number of keywords – In order to get the better results - in terms of relevancy and manageable number of results generated -, always try to control the number of your keywords/concepts for the topic, no more than 3-4 keywords or concepts are preferable.
- How to combine keywords:
- To combine keywords in different concepts, using AND
- evaporation AND water AND cycle AND ground
- To combine similar keywords or synonyms, using OR
- e.g.: evaporation OR vapor OR transpiration
- Using a sybmoc called asterisk (*) as truncation character or wildcards to retrieves variations of the search term
- Farm* >- will find: farm, farms, farmer, farming
- Hydr* >- will find: Hydraulics OR Hydrogeology OR Hydrogeochemistry OR hydrology
- To combine keywords in different concepts, using AND
Examples of Using AND, OR, Quotation Mark
Using: AND
- evaporation AND water
- may get overwhelming results ... Why? How to narrow down?
- evaporation AND water AND cycle AND ground
- results reduced to 700+
- evaporation AND cycle AND "ground water"
- result reduced further - see this link
Using "Quotation Mark" to force a phrase search:
- "ground water flow"
- "ground-water flow"
- "groundwater flow"
Using: OR:
- "ground water flow" OR "ground-water flow" OR "groundwater flow"
- Using OR to lead to more results, as long as one of them can be found
Put all-in-one: Combination of AND, OR, with Content-related Fields -- Subject field/SU and Title/TI fields -- to get the optimal, more precise search results
- Search Statement: TI(evaporation OR vapor OR transpiration) AND su(ground) AND su(water) AND su(flow)
- Including the following elements:
- TI(evaporation OR vapor OR transpiration)
- AND SU(ground)
- AND SU(water)
- AND SU(flow)
- Results and Comparison:
- 60 Results from GeoRef Databases
- Comparing results: if search not limiting to subject and title fields (i.e., without using SU and TI)
How to Find Relevant Keywords / Terminologies for Your Topics?
How to find topics or useful keywords?
- Figure out your keywords from your topic interest/focus, textbook, or even from quick-and-dirty searching literature in your field
- From your Course Syllabus, e.g.:
- water cycle
- evaporation,
- condensation,
- precipitation,
- runoff, surface runoff
- stream flow,
- percolation,
- groundwater flow
- pollution control,
- environmental rehabilitation,
- transpiration, infiltration, ground-water flow, and streamflow ......
- Searching the Thesaurus within Specifc databases to find out widely-used terms by authors or experts:
- GeoRef (ProQuest) >Thesaurus > Select button for "Begins with (enter at least 2 characters)" > only type four letter: HYDR (stop typing on HYDR) > get a list of available narrower, broader, and related terms
- Database Water Resources Abstracts (ProQuest) > top menu > click Thesaurus > this link