From information need to a search line

Research the decision, not the topic

A case runs out of facts. The brief gives fourteen breakdowns and a lease quote; it does not say whether $4,000 a year is a normal repair bill for a five-year-old press, or whether Ontario printers usually lease. Those are information needs, and they are derived from the decision — what must be known to score the alternatives — never from the topic. "Research the printing industry" is a topic, and a week can vanish into it; "typical annual maintenance cost of a five-year-old digital press" is a need, and it takes an afternoon.

Olds's chapter on research gives the sequence: purpose and audience → the information need → narrow the topic → keywords, synonyms, components → a search line with Boolean operators → a record of where every fact came from.

Worked example — Lakeshore's two needs

Purpose: recommend what to do about the press. Audience: Priya, who will check any external figure against her own experience. From the stage-3 criteria, two things the case does not give:

1. The annual maintenance cost of a press of the age Lakeshore would be buying or leasing — needed to score alternative B's "≈ $4,000/yr repairs" as realistic or optimistic.
2. Whether leasing or buying is the norm for commercial printers of this size in Ontario — needed to score lock-in and flexibility.

Now the keywords. Start with the nouns in the need — digital press, maintenance cost, lease — then expand each: synonyms (production printer; service contract; leasing, rental, finance lease) and components (the press's parts: imaging unit, feed system; the cost's parts: parts, labour, downtime). Then assemble:

("digital press" OR "production printer") AND (lease OR leasing OR "finance lease") AND Ontario

The quotation marks keep a phrase together; OR inside the brackets widens each concept to its synonyms; AND between the brackets requires all three concepts, which narrows; NOT would exclude a term (NOT inkjet, if only toner presses are wanted); a wildcard (print*) catches printer, printing, printers. Six results that match are worth more than six thousand that mention one word.

Keep the source with the fact

Every fact captured is written with its locator: title, author, date, page or URL, and the sentence it supports. Two reasons. You will cite it in the memo — the rubric line sources cited where facts are external. And a fact without its source becomes, three weeks later, a sentence in your memo whose origin you no longer know: accidental plagiarism, module 2's offence, and a claim Priya cannot check. Highlighting a page does neither; noting claim + locator does both.

Write the clinic's line

Need: the effect of appointment reminders on no-show rates in small dental practices. Keywords: appointment reminder; no-show; dental practice. Synonyms: SMS reminder, text reminder; missed appointment, non-attendance; dental clinic, dental office. Line:

("appointment reminder" OR "text reminder" OR SMS) AND ("no-show" OR "missed appointment") AND dental

Dental rather than "dental practice": the single word catches practice, clinic and office. And a second, narrower line if the first drowns: add AND Canada.

Type one cold

The snippet below is the shape. Type it until the brackets and operators come automatically; then, for any case, fill in the three concepts the decision needs and their synonyms.