This is a presentation delivered to Year Three students on the BSc(Hons) Health and Community Studies course at University Campus Oldham (www.uco.oldham.ac.uk) in October 2013. It covers a range of information sources of interest to students starting their final year Literature Study including Summon and other University of Huddersfield databases (www.library.hud.ac.uk) and provides tips and information on effective and informed searching. Further information on UCO Library can be found at www.uco.oldham.ac.uk/library

1. http://cfile225.uf.daum.net/image/177E40244ADFFEA250DB66
Health and Community Studies
Year Three: Literature Study

2.  Work to do before you search
 Refresher on Summon and new
features of Summon 2.0
 Search for relevant journals
 Other health &community resources
 Practice (I’m here to help!)

3. “A good literature review is an
organised, balanced and critical
overview of published work
relevant to the topic. “

4. “It should summarise the literature
studied, critically comment on at
least some of the sources used, and
outline the current level of
understanding in terms of published
theory and research.”

5. “All the references cited should be relevant and
current. A general guide is to only include
references from the last 5 years, unless the
work referred to is seminal, used as a historical
source, or selected for any other specific
reason which should be stated. You may wish
to explore the currency of your sources with
your supervisor.”

6.  Dates you searched
 Name of search engine or system
 Names of the sources (database or
website)
 Categories, key words, limitations, etc
 Ways in which you broadened or
narrowed the search
 A comment on how many "hits" you
found

7. Search terms




Think about alternatives
Think about phrases
Think broadly
Think more specifically

8. http://thesaurus.com/
http://www.collinsdictionary.com
/english-thesaurus

9. Books/ebooks/websites/newspapers
etc may not be suitable to use in
your Literature Study but will help
you understand the subject AND
help you with Search Terms

10. New look and new features

11.  Limit by date range
 Sort by date order
 Limit by item type (ebooks, journal
articles, etc)
 Use Advanced Search to search in
different fields (title, abstract, etc)

12. On the results page, click the Down
arrow next to the Search button

13. Searching inside the title or abstract of
an article helps to narrow your results

14.  Use “phrase searching” to be
more specific
 Use truncation to broaden
your results

15.  Search multiple variations of the
same word, eg.
Communication
Communications
Communicated
Communicates

16. Use the asterisk* to say:
I want anything that starts like this…
For
child, children, chil
dhood, child’s, chil
dcare

17. Communication
Here’s the tricky bit....
Where do you put the asterisk?

18. Communicat*
Communication
Communications
Communicating
Communicated

19. Use with caution!
Comm*
Community, Communism, Commentary
Communication*
You won’t get Communicated, Communicating

20. Use with caution!
Remember, you are broadening your
search
You may get too much!

21. Be specific
Put it in “quotation marks”

22. “Residential care”
and
“Elderly people”

23. Use with caution!
“Misdiagnosis of dementia and it’s
impact on residential care in North
West England”
This is a sentence, not a phrase!

24. Putting individual words in
quotation marks is “no”
benefit at all.

25. 

Think broadly (what would relevant journals be
called?)
Think laterally (think of all the relevant disciplines)

26. 






Social work in health care
Health and social care in the community
Journal of youth and adolescence
Child & youth services
Children and youth services review
Health promotion practice
International journal of health promotion and
education
Choose a journal (or find one yourself) and try searching
inside it for articles

27. The articles that this author has
referenced
*Example from CINAHL
The articles that have referenced this article

28. http://hud.libguides.com/
Search for
databases by title
or
browse by
subject area

29.  Think about your subject…
 Which is the closest matching
discipline (Nursing? Social Work?
Sociology?)
 Choose a discipline to find lots of
useful databases and links to
websites

30. Listed under Nursing:
 CINAHL
 Medline
Listed under Social Work
 Social Care Online
 Community Care Inform

31. There’s no easy answer!
Picture courtesy of Hannah K on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/90692443@N05/

32. http://www.mrc.ac.uk/ResearchPortfolio/index.htm
NB: Not updated since June 2010!!
http://www.esrc.ac.uk/impacts-and-findings/research-catalogue/index.aspx

33. http://doaj.org
These journals are freely published,
but high quality and peer reviewed

34. http://doaj.org
Some of these journals you will find
on Summon, but not all – it’s worth
a search

35. Photo courtesy of Marco Bellucci on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcobellucci/

36. Tel: 0161 344 8888
Email: ucolcc@oldham.ac.uk
Or just come and ask 

37. Thanks for listening!