Research Guide of the Month

When researching a topic related to gender and/or sexual diversity, you have many keyword options. Some keywords can be searched for on their own, such as:

homosexuality

transgender

lesbians

However, many important keywords for this topic will be phrases rather than a single word, such as marriage equality. You can try searching for both keywords, but if you're seeing a lot of irrelevant results, try enclosing the phrase in quotation marks. This will ensure that the database searches for that exact phrase instead of each word separately. For example:

"queer theory"

"marriage equality"

"intersex rights"

"bathroom bills"

"stonewall riots"

You can broaden your search by grouping similar words together using OR, which will help you find resources that talk about the same or related topics using different language. This is particularly helpful for LGBTQ+ topics, because the language we use to discuss these concepts tends to evolve quickly, so there are lots of keywords we can use. For example:

queer OR lgbt OR glbt OR lgbtq OR lgbtqia OR lgbtqia2s

bisexuality OR pansexuality

asexual OR aromantic OR demisexual OR demiromantic

This is a topic where wildcard characters often come in handy. A wildcard character, which is usually represented by an asterisk (*), will search for a variety of word endings without you having to search for each variation. For example:

lgbt* will include lgbt OR lgbtq OR lgbtqia OR lgbtqia2s

bisexual* will include bisexual OR bisexuality

Try adding more keywords using AND to narrow your search. For example:

transgender AND healthcare AND california

You can also combine AND and OR operators by putting parentheses around the OR group of keywords. For example:

politics AND (gay OR lesbian OR bisexual OR transgender)

gender AND (nonbinary OR nonconforming OR expansive OR fluid)

(HIV OR AIDS) AND activism

(transgender OR "gender identity") AND "workplace protections"

You can also narrow your search further by removing keywords that you don't want included using NOT. For example:

asexual NOT biology