Identifying key concepts is an important step, as they form the foundation of your information search. For searching, the main concepts of your topic are translated or adapted into keywords. In databases, searches are not performed using full sentences in natural language, but rather with individual words and phrases (multi-word terms), which are combined into search strings using Boolean operators.
A broad selection of keywords produces comprehensive search results, so it’s worth brainstorming plenty of them. You can map keywords for your topic in the following ways:
Various tools can be used to assist in familiarizing yourself with the concepts and terminology of the research area:
In addition, it’s a good idea to look for keywords in journal articles, textbooks, Wikipedia, and similar sources.
You can also make use of the metadata from publications already found in databases, for example by examining their subject fields (Subjects).
Take advantage of AI tools as well.
Publications in databases are described using subject terms, which are usually selected from a controlled vocabulary or thesaurus. Subject terms are used both for information retrieval and for describing the content of database materials. The purpose of controlled vocabularies is to help users find the desired information as easily as possible.
Controlled vocabularies define relationships between terms (broader, narrower, and related terms). They may also include foreign language equivalents. Therefore, they can provide useful keyword suggestions as well as translations.
Controlled vocabularies can be general in nature or specific to a particular field. Examples include:
General Finnish Ontology YSO
EKS Subject Headings
Medical Subject Headings MeSH
In Finland, the most commonly used controlled vocabulary is the General Finnish Ontology (YSO). It is used in, for example, university libraries and public library databases. YSO is multilingual (Finnish, Swedish, English, Northern Sámi), which makes it useful for searching international material as well.
Foreign databases, such as those in ProQuest and EBSCOhost, have their own database-specific controlled vocabularies, also known as thesauri.
