Business Management Capstone Business Plan Assignment LibGuide

Basic Search Terms and Strategies

• Nouns (names of some thing or someone) work best as search terms.
• Make a list of words, word variations, and synonyms (different words that mean the same thing) to use when searching the databases.
• Examples:
  • entrepreneur; entrepreneurship
  • SWOT, SWOT analysis
  • management; manager; operations management; project management; strategic management
  • business; business model; business structure; small business; micro-business
  • product; services
  • company; corporation
  • personnel; employee; staff
  • profit; profit margin
  • value; value proposition
  • consumer; customer, target-market; market segmentation; niche market

Advanced Search Strategies

• Use Boolean Operators (AND, OR, and NOT) to help you narrow or expand your results
  • Examples
    • Searching for restaurant AND delivery will give you results with both words present. Therefore, your results are fewer.
    • Using OR between similar keywords restaurant OR cafe will give you results that include either word alone or both words together. Therefore, your results are greater. A search for will retrieve either or both terms.

      The NOT operator gives you results from only one of your words -  delivery NOT mail - . Therefore, your results are fewer. Searching  eliminate articles containing the word mail from the results.

    • Most databases have an Advanced Search option that provdes you with three or more boxes to insert keywords, phrases, names etc. and options to choose AND, OR, and NOT from a drop-down menu.

• Wildcard Searching - Truncation will save you time by searching or variations of a root word

  • Example
    • add an asterisk to a root word, manag* means you will locate articles or information for ALL variations of the root, manag*

    • manage, manages, manager, managers, managing, management

If you have trouble finding information

• expand your list of search terms 
  • find more terms in the titles and description of articles
  • look for subject lists and bolded terms in the articles
• try putting quotes or parentheses around phrases of more than one word to search for the phrase instead of the individual words separately