Good searching can shorten your research time significantly. Here are some tips from the pros:

• Use quotation marks around a phrase to inform the search engine to look for exactly the phrase you enter- for example "food desert" or "youth activism".

• When searching for a keyword with multiple variations use the root form of the word and add an asterisk (*). This means using child* will retrieve items that have all variations-- "child", "children", "childhood", etc.

• Be specific: A search for "housing crisis" and eviction* or "rental cost" or "affordable housing" is better than one for "housing issues".

• Use the built-in database filters to focus your results- most interfaces let you limit by publication date, subject, format and more.

• Finally, ZSR Librarians are here to help you find the best sources for your research assignment!