Activity

You are writing a paper about the history of voting rights in the United States.

Examples:

• women's suffrage movement
• African-American voting rights

1. Brainstorm some words.
2. How do these words relate to each other?
   Synonyms? Different aspects of the topic?
3. Any concepts you want to exclude?
4. Try a search using OR, AND, NOT.
5. Assess your results:
   How many results did you get?
   How relevant were your results to your topic?
   How would you make a broader search?
   How would you make a narrower, more precise search?

databases to explore:

• EBSCOHost Academic Search Premier
• History Resource Center: United States
• Women and Social Movements in the United States
• Black Thought and Culture
• SJ Library Catalog

*Brainteaser:

If you search for "suffrage" AND "women" NOT "African American"
which important historical figure might you inadvertently exclude?
Answer

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©2007 by Jessica Goodman

e-mail: jgoodman@slis.sjsu.edu

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Credits: Image of historical figure from Wikimedia Commons.