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Environmental Studies

Getting started

Are you new to research? on this page you will find a bit of info to help you get started. Feel free to contact your liaison librarians at any point if you would like to book an appointment.

Working with your research question

1. Formulate a specific research question.
For example, "Which methods of biological control are effective on invasive ladybug species?"

2. Identify the main concepts.
In our question, the main concepts would be "biological control", "invasive" and "ladybug".

3. Brainstorm synonyms and related terms for each of your concepts.
For "ladybug", we could have "coccinellidae", "ladybird" and "lady beetle".

It’s important to find related terms to obtain more relevant results. If we search only “ladybug”, we may miss articles that are relevant but that have used a different term instead, like “ladybird”.

Background sources such as subject-specific encyclopedias and dictionaries can be a great way to learn more about your topic.



 

Search techniques

Boolean operators are used to narrow or broaden your search.

AND: results include all keywords (used to narrow a search)
Example: bee AND neonicotinoids AND monsanto
Search results will contain all three terms.

OR: results include any or all keywords (used to broaden a search)
Example: ladybug OR ladybird
Search results will contain any of these terms.

NOT: results ignore a keyword (used to narrow a search)
Example: Turkey NOT Thanksgiving
Search results will exclude articles containing Thanksgiving.

 


Truncation (*): used to search variations on a word stem.
Example: Canad*
Search results will include Canada, Canadian, Canadians.
Be careful with truncation as it may yield results that contain unrelated words. Example: leg*
Search results will include leg, legs, legging, legal, legalized, etc.

Phrase searching (“”): used to search for an exact phrase or a concept containing more than one word.
Example: “climate change”
Search results will include the exact phrase, with the keywords next to each other and in the order they are typed.
Climate change (without quotation marks) will be searched as separate keywords.

Parentheses (): used to control the order in which Boolean operators are resolved.
Operations within parentheses are resolved first followed by those outside the parentheses.

 


 

 

Evaluate Your Sources

Evaluating your sources is critical if you want to know if the information you found in a book, in an article or on the Web is good information you can use. If you're unsure where to start, the CRAAP Test (see below) is a great tool to point you in the right direction! 

 

Currency: The timeliness of the information.​

Relevance: The importance of the information for your needs.

Authority: The source of the information.

Accuracy: The reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content.

Purpose: The reason the information exists.

 

Adapted from: Blakeslee, S. (2010). Evaluating Information – Applying the CRAAP Test. Retrieved from https://library.csuchico.edu/sites/default/files/craap-test.pdf

 

Librarian - Macdonald Campus

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Emily MacKenzie
Contact:
Macdonald Campus Library
Barton Building
514-398-7876
Subjects: Environment

Librarian

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Andrea Miller-Nesbitt
she/her/elle
Contact:
Schulich Library of Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Engineering (Office located in the McLennan Library Building during the Schulich closure)
514-398-1663
Website

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