Effective keywords for effective searching
Without the right keywords, you may miss important resources. Before you begin searching, take some time to brainstorm possible terms and keep in mind the following:
Place
Think about where events took place. Use both narrow terms (specific city or town) and broader ones (prefecture or region). Also consider older place names, such as Edo for Tokyo.
Date Range
Use both Western calendar dates and Japanese era names, as well as general historical periods (e.g., medieval, premodern). Keep in mind that different terms may refer to the same period, e.g., Tokugawa and Edo.
People
In addition to the name of the person you are writing about, look for connections, teachers, students, collaborators, or rivals. Remember that writers, artists, and performers often had pseudonyms, stage names, or alternative spellings.
Related Topics
Identify the main issues or themes you want to focus on. What historical events were happening during this person’s lifetime? What cultural, political, or social contexts might be relevant?
Combining concepts
Use Boolean Logic, which uses special terms called 'operators,' to make your keyword searching powerful.
- Boolean OR: This operator serves to broaden a search by capturing synonyms or variant spellings of a term. If you want to find any of the terms in the search, use the Boolean operator OR.
Example: "kaguya hime" OR kaguyahime
- Boolean AND: This operator operator narrows a search by capturing two or more ideas or concepts. If you want to find both of the following words in the search, use the Boolean operator AND.
Example: 社会主義 AND 日本
The following diagram describes how the Boolean operators, AND, OR and NOT, work in database searching.
