HIST 2210: Ancient Greece (Knapp)

Start with your area of focus (e.g. women in Ancient Greece) and topic (e.g. widows). If you're having trouble selecting a topic, review background sources such as Oxford Classical Dictionary entries, for inspiration. 

Brainstorm additional search terms. Depending on your topic, this could include broader terms, narrower terms, or related terms. For example: unmarried women (broader term). It's helpful to do some preliminary brainstorming before you start searching, just in case you get stuck. 

Identify synonyms, words with the same (or similar) meaning. For example: chēra (Greek for "woman without a husband"). Synonyms are important because scholars may use different terminology. Terminology can also change over time.

As you conduct your research, continue to record related terms and synonyms. Incorporate these additional terms into your search to ensure you're not missing out on anything!

Unlike Google, which accomodates natural language searching, many of the library's search engines like a well-constructed search. Here are some of techniques that will help you to get the most out of your searches: 

• Use quotation marks to indicate when words are used together as a phrase
  • Example: "unmarried woman"
• Use the asterisk (* symbol) for words with variable endings
  • Example: Gree* = Greece and Greek
• Use OR to indicate synonyms
  • Example: widow OR "unmarried woman" OR chēra 
• Use AND to connect search terms 
  • This is optional; most search engines do this automatically behind the scenes

Here's an example search string:

• Ancient Gree* AND (widow OR "unmarried woman" OR chēra)