CJU 405: MN State Criminal Law and Traffic Codes

Searching in the library's resources depends on the keywords - or search terms - you use. Instead of searching for a whole question or sentence, break your topic into keywords. Mix and match different combinations of keywords to get different results when searching. Also, think of similar or related terms you can search for.

For example:

Research question: How do community policing techniques affect crime rates in urban areas?

Possible keyword combinations:

• community policing AND crime
• community policing AND urban
• community-oriented policing AND cities AND crime
• [name a specific community policing technique] AND crime

Mix and match different keywords to find different articles.

Watch this video for more help on brainstorming keywords:

Searching for newspaper articles in library databases is different from looking at news websites. 

Library databases contain the "paper of record," -- which may differ from the articles you see on the newspapers' websites. 

If you see an article online and want to find the full text in the library, you may need to search multiple ways:

• Article title
• Article author
• Browse by date
• Look at articles from several dates

Need more help? Check out these additional guides for more research tips.