Last week, you should have completed a few simple searches in your area and found four potential sources. This week, you’ll try a few advance searches for better results and find two new potential sources, for which you will create bibliographical annotations. You’ll record your search parameters, the number of results, two potential sources, and this week, you will also record subject terms for your two new sources.

This activity, and the other library search activities coming up, are intended to ensure you understand a few different search techniques, use reliable databases, and understand a few indicators of what makes a good search of the literature.

Conduct at least Three Advanced Searches. In each search:

1. Use a boolean term to refine the search and improve results.
2. Use limiters to further refine results.
3. Refine each search until it shows less than 200 results.
4. Note: Your search MUST have 20 to 200 results for full credit in this area. If your first three searches do not, follow the #4 instructions below to try different searches and record the info until you have three searches with 20 to 200 results.

On your blog post, document your three advanced searches and list at least two new potential sources:

1. Tell us which database(s) you used for each search.
2. Be clear about what search words, boolean terms, and limiters you used for each search.
3. Note how many results you had for each search, whether the search was generally useful, and why or why not.
4. If you end up conducting additional simple or advanced searches to find the right terms to use for the three assigned searches, be sure to take the same notes on them to help you overall with your literature review.
5. In at least two searches, create an annotation with an APA-style reference for at least one article you found in that search that may prove useful.
6. Note the subject terms associated with each source.
7. Make sure all of that information is clearly connected
   • Search 1; Communication & Mass Media Complete
   • Media AND News, limiters: Full text & Peer-reviewed, published after 2010
   • This led to 219 results. When I switched the year to 2012, there was only 179 results.
   • Stamps & Mastro (2020) was an interesting article from this. Subject Terms were: (1) Race in mass media, (2) Mass media & race relations, (3) Public demonstrations, (4) Social groups, (5) Media effects theory (Communication), (6) Race relations in mass media, (7) Social unrest, (8) Collective action, (9) Race discrimination in mass media, and (10) Sensationalism in mass media
   • [Then, include the annotation below the information on the searches. Or, put the full annotation with the search, your choice.]
   • TIP, if you say you searched Media AND News, I will assume you did not specify whether the searches were TX (all text), SU (subject terms), KW (author-supplied keywords), or other specific search types. Only use those specific search types when you specified them in the search.
8. Categorize your post as “Week 11 Blog post” include hashtags for your research area, use a unique title that helps us understand your general topic and/or a search term or two, and include at least one picture in your post.

What Are Subject Terms?

Subject terms are specific terms decided by a database and assigned to articles. They are different than the keywords you developed based on your research topic and different than “author-supplied keywords.” Below, you can see the Subject Terms highlighted in a screengrab of one EBSCOhost database. Notice how Subject Terms and Keywords are different entries in that screengrab.

What if nothing is identified as Subject Terms?

Then you should switch to another database that will have search terms. Feel free to reach out to me, Heather VanDyne, or another librarian for help with that.