When using search engines or library databases, choose the search keywords based on your topic's key concepts. Sample keywords in biomedical engineering can include: biomaterials, biomedicine, clinical engineering, drug delivery, drug delivery system(s), nanobiotechnology, or synthetic biology. New terminology is constantly emerging, so it is important to look at the keywords associated with relevant articles that you have already found.
To develop your search question:
Key Concept | Related Terms | |
Concept 1 | ||
Concept 2 | ||
Concept 3 |
Next, you will need to translate your keywords into language that a search engine recognizes. Here are several strategies:
As you search, you want to look for records that have all the concepts. Use the operator AND to join the different concepts.
Here's what a final search string could look like:
(bioethic* OR ethic*) AND "tissue engineering" OR "regenerative medicine")
These terms may be useful if you are searching in a Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) catalogue such as MEDLINE/PubMed.
These terms may be helpful when searching the library catalogue as well as some databases.
Use Omni to search the library's catalogue for books, articles, videos, maps, government documents, music, data sets, open access materials, and more. You can discover materials that are not available at Queen's but that you can freely request either within Omni or through interlibrary loan.