Cambridge University Library How to do a literature search Emma Coonan Research Skills Librarian, Cambridge University Library

What is it? Searching for (chiefly) published work about a topic of your choice Aiming to get a sound grasp of your topic and its context Joining the academic dialogue

What is it? “A detailed and organised, step by step search for all the material available on a topic.”

Unknown unknowns “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.”

1. Where to look

Your research sources: 1 Books Newton LibrarySearch Journals Newton / LibrarySearch

Librarians catalogue the name of the ‘container’: the title of an edited book - not the book chapter the journal title - not the article Search for what’s on the spine

Journals and journal articles Journal titles are notoriously tricky! Is it called - Journal of … Journal of the … Journal for … International journal of …

Known unknowns: strategies Networking from a known item (‘pearl growing’) Categories and facets Keywords search.lib.cam.ac.uk

Your research sources: 2 Journal articles Book chapters Conference papers Festschriften contributions Reports Reviews Patents ? Where can I find … Not in the library catalogue!

What’s a citation database? Citation database = article search engine Began as online indexes of journal articles Expanded to contain other document types May offer full-text links Not comprehensive

Library catalogue

Citation database

Text archive vs. citation database JSTOR contains about 1,750 journals (March 2010) full-text articles: c. 2m Scopus indexes over 16,500 journals article citations: c. 38m Still not comprehensive!

Text archive vs. citation database

2. How to look

Translating your topic into keywords Napoleon or Nelson (either name) Napoleon and Nelson (both names) Napoleon not brandy (excluded word) “ Napoleon Bonaparte ” (as a phrase)

Boolean searching

What’s in a name? Trafalgar = (naval or sea or maritime or marine …) and (battle or conflict or combat or action …)

? and * (wildcard and truncation) ? replaces a single character ‘ Wom?n’ finds ‘woman’ or ‘women’ ‘Globali?ation’ finds British or American spelling * replaces any number of characters (including zero) ‘Pig*’ finds ‘pig’, ‘pigs’, ‘pigmy’, ‘pigment’... ‘Transfer*’ finds ‘transfer’, ‘transfers’, ‘transferable’, ‘transferability’ …

You want to search for material published from 2005 onwards on sustainable transport, with particular reference to cycling. What search keywords and strategies would you use? Over to you …

Try linking your keywords together in different ways and using truncation: “sustainable transport” and cycl* sustainable and transport and cycl* sustainable and transport and *cycl*

Your research topic is going to be cyberbullying among adolescents. What potential search pitfalls can you see? Over to you …

Think about synonyms and variations of your keywords: “cyberbullying” could also be spelt cyber-bullying, or might be referred to as online bullying Synonyms for “adolescents” could include teenagers, young people, youth … Truncation tip: searching for you?? will find hits for both young and youth

3. When to look

When to look As part of your initial approach to the topic or research question Periodically throughout your research RSS and search alerts are very useful here As part of your final writing-up process

Where do I start?

UL homepage – digital library

Research Skills Programme At you can … Find our timetable of subject-based sessions Book for hands-on information skills classes Request one-to-one training Download these slides and other handouts … or

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