NAU 415 Transportation Security

Save yourself some time! Before you start looking for information, reflect on what you really want your topic or question to be.

• Is your question or topic interesting to you, within the confines of the assignment?
• Is it a reasonable size - not too specific or too broad? Could you broaden or narrow it?
• Can it be answered with available information? You may need to start researching to find this out.

Librarians are always happy to help you define a solid topic.

A couple of librarian hacks can help you quickly get better search results.

• Use "quotes" around words or phrases to make the databases look for your exact word or phrase. Example: if you want the exact word Oceanos, not Oceano or Oceans, put it in quotes: "Oceanos." Example: "Coast Guard" looks for those two words together, instead of "coast" in one place and "guard" in another.
• Use an asterisk* to tell the databases to look for all the words that start with your base word. Example: Ship* will look for ship, ships, shipping, and any other words that start with "ship."

These tips will work almost anywhere you look for information, including Google as well as library databases.

The Library offers general and focused databases which may lead you to good sources on issues in transportation security. Using these databases can save you time and effort.

The Library offers several ways to get free access to the full text of news articles.

Source: Sebastian Münster, "Sea Monsters (1600) upper left), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons