Keep track of your search and your results. Remember research is a process and you may try many things before you find what works best for your topic.
Keep track of your search terms and jot down other words you find while perusing the articles that result from your searches.
The "search history" option under the search box can also help with that.
Email, print, or save articles that might be useful for your research, even if you're not sure that you're going to use them.
If your topic is:
What are some of the roles of women in the Old Testament of the Bible?
1. Identify keywords or phrases:
Role(s) women Old Testament Bible
2. Explore synonyms for your keywords/phrases:
Women: female, girl, Eve, Mary, Ruth
Old Testament: Bible, Hebrew Bible, Tanakh
3. Use these terms in your search. Combine the synonyms with the word "or".
For example: Women OR female OR girl OR Eve
4. Make use of the Subject Headings option on the left of your screen to find appropriate subject headings for your topic and use them in a search
Note: some of your initial keywords may be similar like Old Testament and Bible. Other keywords you could use to distinguish: Old Testament Christian Bible, Hebrew Bible or because we are disucssing a specific part of the Christian Bible, you can use specific terms such as "tanakh" or "Torah" or specific books of the Bible like Genesis or Exodus.
Remember to search in the advanced search mode
Enter your 1st keyword(s)/phrase(s) in the first line (here role).
Your second concept in our example is women. Enter that key phrase and any synonyms in the second line of the search box. Your search results should then include both concepts somewhere in the record.
You can add as many concepts as you like - all databases and the library catalog will allow you to add more than the default 3 fields when you're in advanced search.
Once you have collected some articles, take a closer look at them.
Read and review what you have. Do you have enough information to support your topic?
If you don't like what you have or you don't have enough good information, go back to your search. Try some new keywords or a different database.
Explore some of the subject headings from the articles that you do want to use.
If some of your articles have bibliographies you might want to look at some of the sources listed in those bibliographies.
If you're stuck -- ask a librarian for help.
Reading these sections of an article/book will help you determine if the item you're looking at is relevant to your research.