This session covers the “finding information” content covered in Finding and Managing Information:
Finding Information: The session will provide an overview of the tools available to construct an effective and efficient search which can be applied across a range of academic online databases (proximity connectors, truncation and wildcard searches, Boolean searches, citation searching and keeping up to date), with an emphasis on saving time whilst finding the most relevant information for your research topic.
7. Effective Searching
- Define your information need
- Broaden your search
- Narrow your search
- Evaluate your results
- Make your results work for you
14. Broaden your search
Donut
- 49,812 results in Discover (as at 23rd Oct 2014)
Doughnut
- 51,307 results in Discover (as at 23rd Oct 2014)
- Either / Or = 52,604 results in Discover
Via Flickr Creative Commons, by Pink Sherbert Photography. Original
available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/70873497@N02/6935006104/
15. Broaden your Search
Think about Americanised and
Francophone word spellings:
• colour or color
• centre or center
• licence or license
• organised or organized
16. Broaden your search
Style guides:
Guardian : al-Qaida
Sunday Times : al-Qaeda
17. Broaden your search
• Broadening your search
– Alternative spellings (wildcard searching)
– organi?ation will find: organisation and
alternative letters organization
– labo?r will find: labor and
missing letters labour
– d?nut will find: donut and
multiple missing letters doughnut
19. Broaden your search
• Broadening your search
– Word stems (truncation searching)
– negligen* will find:
“PwC were accused of negligence”
“PwC were accused of acting negligently”
“PwC were accused of being negligent”
20. Broaden your search
• Broadening your search - Summary
– Alternative terms butterfly OR lepidoptera
– Alternative spellings organi?ation
labo?r
– Word stems negligen*
Terminology and symbols vary, depending on which
database or catalogue you are using
24. Narrow your search
Adding context…
truth
within #
reconciliation
Via Flickr Creative Commons, by the waving cat. Original available at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thewavingcat/138657496/sizes/m/in/photostream/
25. Narrow your search
• Narrowing your search
– Proximity Truth within 3 reconciliation
29. Narrow your search
• Narrowing your search
– Excluding irrelevant results NOT South Africa
30. Narrow your search
• Narrowing your search - Summary
– Focussing copyright AND photographs
– Proximity searching negligen* w/5 PwC
– Phrase searching “duty of care”
– Excluding terms property NOT intellectual
Terminology and symbols vary, depending on which
database or catalogue you are using
31. No standard language
Truth within 5
words reconciliation
Truth w/5
reconciliation
Truth /5
reconciliation
Truth N5
reconciliation
Truth adj5
reconciliation
34. Example
(teen* OR youth OR juvenile OR adolescen*)
AND
(crim* OR shoplift* OR “anti-social behavio?r” OR
theft)
AND
(“inner city” OR urban OR cities OR London)
35. (teen* OR youth
OR juvenile OR
adolescen*)
(“inner city”OR
urban OR
cities OR
London)
(crim* OR
shoplift* OR
“anti-social
behavio?r” OR
theft)
38. Getting the most from Google
How to search effectively:
Tsunami defences
assumed ‘AND’ returns results with both terms
Property –intellectual
excludes all results that include ‘intellectual’
Butterfly OR lepidoptera
searches for either of your search terms
39. Getting the most from Google
How to search effectively:
“early warning system”
returns results with exact phrase
intitle:endochronology
returns results with term in document title
site:.gov.uk
only returns results from specific site/domain
~ghosts
returns related terms, eg paranormal, haunted
42. Citation searching &
References
• Connection in academic debate both backwards
(references) and forwards (citations) in time
• May be a positive or negative connection to other
literature
• Give you a quality controlled list of material to
consult if you establish the context in which it
has been cited
43. Paper
A
Article
B
Article
C
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Book1
Article
D
Book 2
Article
G
Article
E
Book4
Article
F
Book 3
48. Finding the right tool for the job
• Overview of what available: Google Scholar
• Manageable number of results: subject specific
database such as IBSS, Westlaw UK, Econlit,
PsycINFO, Embase
• Full text journal articles: Jstor
• Multi-disciplinary, up-to-date: Science Direct
• Primary material: EEBO
• Popular and Trade commentary: Nexis UK
• Conference Proceedings: WoS Proceedings,
Proceedings first
51. If we don’t have a copy…
…. make use of Document Delivery Service or
SCONUL Access if we don’t have what you need.
52. Accessing Resources
• Borrow 40 books for up to 6 months
• Renewals and recalls
• Copy service and postal loans for p-t students
• For resources not in stock
– Ask if the library can purchase it
– Use Document Delivery Service and check to see if
your department covers costs
– SCONUL Access allows you to visit and borrow
from other institutions
Example in image: if you get the reference, it is far more likely that the little storm troopers will got lots of information telling them about what droids they are not looking for.
Google does cope better with typing in a sentence or question than many academic databases, but as professional researchers it is not the best way of searching and you should be trying more appropriate techniques, and many of the databases you may need to, or should be using, will not work very well or at all if you search in this way.
Finally, this is about using those key sources you locate to work for you:-
- providing you with a rich source of pre-selected earlier research from their own list of references
- citation searching to see how the ideas and research in the key sources you have identified have been taken and developed further
- Now itself perceived as not politically acceptable and being replaced by terms including “intellectual disability”.
- Still in use in the United States and by the WHO sometime after the phrase became less commonly used in United Kingdom.
- Changes in terminology and spelling especially important when searching historic sources such as newspapers, official publication and pamphlet collections.
So, if you only searched for “Donut” you are only missing 5.3% of results. But might these be some key articles?
And how does this scale if you happened to be searching for “donut” AND “zebra” - (243 results on 14th October 2014) neuropsychology, ornithology, domestic abuse, how our brains work when translating as we read,
- Many publications have their own terminology and spelling style guide.
I can only imagine the panic in newspaper offices around the globe as ISIS/ISIL/IS kept changing their name.
Will return to alternative spellings in a minute…
You do need to check for each database what search tools are available and how to use them… these are just five examples used by some of our key databases which work in roughly the same way.
At this point, you also need to recognise that each of these ‘concepts’ could be described in multiple ways, be phrased in different ways or cover a broad range of more focussed topics or areas of interest…
Using various tools we have just mentioned:-
Truncation tool
Wildcard
Phrase searching
[animations on slide]
GOOGLE. Shows use of different search tips to narrow down from over 12 million results, to 8 results.
Phrase searching: reduces number of results by 90% (25% in June 2013)
Additional keywords: Focusses search, reduces by 40% (75% in June 2013)
Exclude results: filter out 99% of results
Limit to UK academic sites: Filters out 90% of results…. Good indicator of range of content covered by Google (note, not perfect as by doing this are filtering out academic blogs, most news coverage etc.)
Faceted search: Searching a particular part of a document to add focus. In title of document (in part reliant on authors following web standards).
AND – the more search terms you include, logically the fewer the number of results as results have to mention all terms.
Reason 2 for not typing in a sentence - stop words – Google ignores many terms in searches you might enter, meaning entering a sentence or question is often just a waste of time typing… can include: HE, SHE, AT, THE, A, ZERO, DESCRIBED, UPWARDS, LEAST, THIRD (refer to handout).
NOT – be careful, may remove results which may have been useful and just happened to mention a term in passing, or in reference to something else
OR - broadens your search
Phrase searching – as seen, can have a significant effect. Doesn’t always work (even though Google promote use on their own help pages) but is much better now than was a few years ago
Intitle – does rely on authors of web pages coding their site properly, and the term you are searching for being the key focus of the document (and not just one of several focuses) but can massively reduce number of results.
Site limitation - I personally find this useful, but if you wish to search different domains/sites I find it easier to run separate searches, especially given different terminology between countries/regions (eg retardation used far more recently in US healthcare terminology than in the UK, whilst homicide is obviously a US term so if limiting to UK sites will be of less use).
Synonyms and related terms – useful but difficult to always identify what terms are being searched.
You do need to check for each database what search tools are available and how to use them… these are just five examples used by some of our key databases which work in roughly the same way.
Demo 1
Demo 1
Plug ‘Historical Collections’ and ‘Beyond Academic Literature’ sessions
Additional assistance on subject specific databases from a team of Liaison Librarians
Check:
Show how ConneXions works: use Library Catalogue to look for ‘Catholic Historical review’
Show how doesn’t work with ‘Catholic Biblical Quarterly’
Re sconul how do know what is elsewhere – COPAC and Worldcat