To go from topic to query
- Formulate the research question. This will narrow down the information scope.
- Find the keywords in that research question.
- Look up the keywords, their synonyms, broader, narrower terms, or related terms in reference works (SEP, REP, etc.)
- it’s important to take translations, morphological and spelling variants of the terms you’re looking for. (Ibn Sina and Avicenna, despite referring to the same philosopher, will need to be searched separately)
AND, OR and NOT
Truncation (wild card that fills in entire parts of words): *
Truncation (Wild card for one letter): ?
(None of them are truncation of 0 characters)
Don’t truncate too early in the word, otherwise too many results.
Use "" to search an exact phrase