It can be intimidating to use the library and start a research project, but fear not we (the librarians and your professor) are here every step of the way.
Suggestions as you begin your research:
It helps to start by writing a list of terms that you will use in your search.
Keep notes as you research, the terms you used, where you searched, what you found.
Once you have search terms do some background research to add more terms to your list using an encyclopedia or dictionary.
Now you have a bit more information on your topic, start looking for more in-depth information.
Search for books, use the bibliography from specific chapters to find even more relevant books or articles.
Use library databases (like JSTOR or Project Muse) to search for articles.
What If:
Your Search Returns No References or Too Few References
Look for misspellings in your strategy.
Decrease the number of concepts searched.
Try a broader search term.
Use a term from the thesaurus (i.e., MeSH or subject heading list) for searching.
Use the Related Articles or Similar Articles feature.
Check for missing or incorrect field qualifiers.
Remove terms that are unlikely to be used by an author.
Replace terms that are too general or too specific.
Increase the number of synonyms or alternatives for a term.
Use a truncation symbol at the end of a term to pick up variant endings (check out the linked image for other operators).
Try running the search on earlier years (back files) of the database.
Try a different database.
Your Search Returns Too Many References
Choose the most specific subject headings or most significant key words.
Use subheadings to narrow the focus of the subject heading if appropriate.
Increase the number of search concepts that are AND'ed together (check out the linked image for other operators).
Use fewer synonyms for terms.
Make a term from the thesaurus (i.e. subject heading list or controlled vocabulary) the main focus of the article ("major" in PubMed and "focus" in CINAHL).
Limit to review articles.
Limit your search to type of article, language, age group, current years, etc.
Ask for significant words to be in the TITLE of the article.