You need to make some decisions early on in the process, and you may
change your mind about these decisions as the search progresses. Examples of
possible search limitations are country of publication, language of publication, and
data or type of material (for example, only journal articles). By doing this you start
by making sure you know exactly what you’re not looking for! You then have to
examine your subject and define a basic structure for you initial search. For
example, research into how young people use the internet could potentially cover a
number of areas, so the first step is to define your opening objective. One possible
research question could be: What is the role of the internet as an information source
in primary level education? That question would lead to a search covering topic
such as ‘information and learning’ , ‘children’s internet use’ , ‘the national curriculum’
and ‘electronic information resources for education’. These topics and starting point
but the researcher’s objectives may change as the search progresses. Once you have
organized your subject into topic groups you can then go on to analyse the keywords
within that group to make sure you are using the best possible search terms.