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Preparing a Search Strategy

French Literature

This brief guide is intented to help you begin to prepare an effective search strategy for researching a literary topic.

An example of a literary essay topic: 
Discuss the themes of identity and autobiography in Gabrielle Roy's Bonheur d'occasion.
1. Where to begin:

Once you have read and thought about the text you will be researching, create a list of KEYWORDS that best describe your subject (author, text) and approach to the text (specific themes to be studied; theoretical approaches to the text, for example feminist, marxist, postmodern readings, etc). 
  • Include synonyms to account for variations in terminology. 
  • Try to account for variations in language, spelling (color, colour), tense, etc. 
  • Antonyms are also occasionally helpful.

Examples:

Roy (Personal name)

bonheur d'occasion, tin flute (Text)

autobiography/ical, autobiographie/que, identity/é (Themes/topics)

biography/ical, biographie/que, memory/oire, life/vie, history/oire (Related terms/topics)

note: the above is not intended to represent a complete list of possible terms.

2.  Using the above Keywords, create a variety of search strategies. 

Words and Phrases may be combined using AND, OR, & NOT (i.e. Boolean operators). 

Examples:

roy and (bonheur d'occasion or tin flute)
roy and (bonheur d'occasion or tin flute) and (autobiography or autobiographie)
roy and (autobiography or autobiographie) and (identity or identité)
(bonheur d'occasion or tin flute) and (autobiography or autobiographie) and (identity or identité)
roy and (identity or identité) and (memory or mémoire)


3.  Select the appropriate Journal Indexes and begin searching. 

Consult the Find Articles - French Literature page to identify the Journal Indexes and Electronic Databases that are most appropriate for your subect.

Tips:

  • Keep track of your searches (search history) and save your search results.

  • Evaluate your search results: are the items uncovered by your search appropriate? relevant? of interest? 

  • Pay attention to descriptors (similar to Subject Headings: terms used to describe what an item is about) and words in the titles of articles -- you may discover additional words to add to your list of keywords.

  • Use multiple search strategies: do not rely on the results from just one or two searches. Use various combinations of words and phrases (see above) and perform multiple searches.

  • Remember: research does not necessarily end once you begin writing your paper!  New areas of interest may come to light once you start working through your preliminary research findings.  You may want to perform new searches that incorporate this new information, new terminology, etc.