Generic Skills Workshop Advanced Library Skills Sue Godsell
Tonight’s session n Literature searching Getting the words right n Using the right tools n Search techniques n Keeping up to date n Using other libraries n Managing your references n
Getting the words right Why? § The results you will get are only as good as the search you enter How? § Determine and analyse the individual concepts in your proposal and consider how they are interrelated § Using a search analysis sheet/mind mapping tool (e. g. Inspiration) can help
Example of a mind map for a literature search
Getting the words right continued List your key words/phrases and then consider… § Variant spellings • American English e. g. behaviour/behavior, organisation/organization • Plurals e. g. child/children • Prefixes and hyphens e. g. self-esteem § Alternative terms § e. g. climate change/global warming § Wider / narrower concepts § e. g. cancer <–> blood cancer <–> lymphoblastic leukaemia § You may be able to use a thesaurus e. g. Psyc. Info, Me. SH
Using the right tools § The Library subscribes to 90+databases to help you identify what has been published in your field § Which ones are best for your research? See the subject guide(s) or ask your subject librarian § Check the scope and coverage § Become familiar with the interface(s) § Same search principles and techniques apply to different interfaces
Some search techniques § Phrase searching: put exact phrases in quotation marks e. g. “quantitative easing” § Truncation or stemming: asterisk after the word stem e. g. geneti* § Wildcards: used for variant spellings e. g. organi? ation, labo$r
More search techniques § Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT § Brackets: e. g. (cold* or flu or influenza) and (“vitamin c” or “ascorbic acid”) § Proximity searching: specify how close keywords are to each other, e. g. business* n 2 ethic*, global* same warm*
Boolean Logic AND Los Angeles OR Architecture Vitamin C NOT Java Indonesia Ascorbic Acid
More search techniques n n n “Pearl growing” - a way of expanding your search if you have found/been told about one or more important paper(s) in your field Use the words and phrases found in the title/abstract/keywords and search on these Search for more articles by the same author Use any “related records” feature that the database has Look at the bibliography of that paper Carry out a citation search
More search techniques Citation Searching n Useful once you have identified one or more important papers in your field n Allows you to find papers that have cited a paper you know about n Good way of searching forward in time, from an older paper to more recent ones
Keeping up to date Save your search(es) and set up alerts to get new additions by email n Set up citation alerts to find out which new papers cite an important paper in your field n Register at journal web sites/Citation Indexes/ZETOC to get the latest tables of contents of the most useful journals emailed to you n
Using other Libraries Find out which other libraries you can use: n n n University of London libraries Senate House Library British Library SCONUL Access Scheme allows research students to borrow See the subject guide/ask your subject librarian about other libraries Interlibrary loan service
Managing your references Use a bibliographic management package such as End. Note, Zotero or Mendeley n These will help you store and search the references you have collected n End. Note and others also work with Word to help you with citing your references when writing up n
IMPROVING YOUR SEARCH SKILLS Any questions?
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