Searching for Information aura Engaged Excellence in Research and Teaching Practices Searching for Information Research 1, Session 16, Day Three

Learning Outcomes By the end of the session, you will be able to: Practice two techniques for constructing broad and narrow search strategies: Boolean Operators Concept tables

How Information Retrieval Tools Work We will look at how the information retrieval tools work. This is a modern book retrieval system Flickr.com/richardcawood

The Information Seeking Experience Answer question Determine what kind of information is needed Critically analyse, synthesise Identify words / phrases / synonyms Refine search Critically review / capture results Critically select e-sources Develop search strategy (broaden / narrow using techniques e.g. in title Understand functionality i.e. how it works

Searching Document system Indexing system Vocabulary system Search system User interface ? Search engine Online database CD ROM ‘inverted file’ Abacus …. … Zulu Web pages Articles, references EXTERNAL / INTERNAL You can see that the researcher is in fact searching an A to Z index on the database. You are not actually searching all the articles on the internet or the database. The index would then be used by the database, which could be Google, to point to specific articles or websites.   ‘point to ‘records’’ ‘records’ ‘sort’ ‘display’

Enabling Boolean Logic AND, OR, AND NOT ‘exact match’ A AB B A AB B A AB B ALSO enabling ‘best match’ processing and ranking

Databases: The example of Google Google, for example, works as other databases and you also searching an index hence the words you choose are also very important bearing in mind the ‘stupidity’ (or simplicity) of the machine. Therefore, Google will only look for information using the keywords you put in the search engine. However it will try to identify some synonyms but it is questionable to what extent it will do this. In addition, in the sort stage Google will rank resources e.g. articles according to its algorithms. For example, the frequency of terms, the position, the co-occurrence (i.e. whether the terms occur near each other in the article) and also how often people have linked to the site or webpage. Picture retrieved from: http://www.lib.vt.edu/libnews/2012/M_google-scholar-advanced.jpg

Enabling you to limit the search to parts of a ‘record’ in a database Metadata e.g. creator Words in these fields, records and databases can be processed according to frequency and position Title etc. All/some words Extracted to the searchable index Abstract/full text Indexing e.g controlled vocabulary Classification e.g. DDC fields e.g. MARC Format, Common Communication Format

Search Techniques Flickr.com/idfonline

Search Techniques Narrower/specific/known item Known author within the title field or other searchable field Index term (controlled vocabulary [narrow term]) within an index field using proximity or phrase searching using the Boolean AND ‘free text’ term using the Boolean OR Index term (controlled vocabulary [broad term]) Broaden/unspecific/unknown item

Common problems Solutions generally relate to: Poor choice of terms (too specific, too general, too few); Wrong sources, wrong interface Not using the functionality of the sources (structure of the book, not using fields/ proximity / date – the sliding scale of specificity) Not using articles to find articles (chaining, ‘pearl growing’, citation searching) Too many items Too few items Irrelevant items

‘Hits’ Tips Go back to the terms you have chosen and see whether you can be more specific Use the advanced search of the search tool Choose a term or terms that are not going to be common in many records in the database. Use more specific words. Link terms using AND or ask for them to be near each other (if the database enables this) Restrict your search to the title field Ask for terms to be near each other Restrict your search to fields that ensure that the records retrieved will have been indexed as about that term, such as the descriptor or keyword field Reduce the number of items by limiting the search by date, for example, only getting material published in the last year

Mind Map example: Health implications of Water Pollution in Kenya Illness Pollution Health Diseases Water Bacteria Infections Kenya Rivers Cholera

Concept ‘Clusters’ Health Physical Fitness Health implications Health conditions Disease Bacteria Infections Cholera Now I have the areas that I’m interested in taken from the mind map I can start to cluster these into specific areas and also look for other terms that could be used to describe these areas. These terms are my search terms which I will eventually use to formulate search strategies for searching databases for information.

Concept tables Transfer clustered terms / phrases etc. into a search table to: Create a list of terms that you will use for searching Link associated terms under an ‘umbrella’ concept E.g. Globalisation E.g. Climate Change Clustered terms form search strategy

Concept Table Example Key concept 1 Key concept 2 Key concept 3 Water Health Pollution Water management Health conditions Environmental degradation River, Rivers Diseases Water Pollution I take my concept ‘clusters’ and find related terms for the concepts and place them into a table. For example another concept which is often used for ‘Pollution’ is ‘environmental degradation’. Do you see that we are now creating a list of terms that can be used for searching?

Concept table example Key concept 1 Key concept 2 Key concept 3 Water Health Pollution Water management Health conditions Environmental degradation River, Rivers Diseases Water Pollution

Activity: Create Concept Clusters & Synonyms Take the research questions you have identified, and start to cluster ideas, concepts, terms and keywords Remember to identify synonyms What terms are you going to look for in relation to your research question? Health Physical Fitness Health implications Health conditions Disease Bacteria Infections Cholera

Activity Continue: Crafting a search strategy Using a flip-chart or the handout, individually create a concept table and indicate how you will combine terms to create a search strategy Create a concept table & Search strategy (15 mins) Key concept 1 [Insert high-level concept] Key concept 2 [Insert high-level concept] Key concept 3 [Insert high-level concept] [Insert concept]

Activity: Research Database Choose a research database (e.g. Google), or another database, and find one ‘article’ that relates to your topic: It could be anything – including grey literature Download the article as a PDF, Word or TXT file

Google Search Tips: Punctuation Symbol What you can use it for + Include term in the search results e.g. +Malaria and +Polio - Remove words from search results e.g. +Malaria –Vaccine “ ” Word or phrase in quotes, the results will only pages with the same words in the same order See Google: punctuation & symbols that Google Search recognizes: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en Source: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

Google Search Operators What you can use it for Site: Get results from a specific site or domain e.g. Site:ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed malaria vaccination e.g. Site:scholar.google.co.uk malaria vaccination -site: Exclude results from a specific domain or site e.g. malaria -site:scholar.google.co.uk Source: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

Site: tag (locating information quickly) Used to locate information on a site, containing specific keyword content: Format: No space between Site:website Not necessary to use www.website_address Combined terms use speech marks “term” Site: + the keywords Site:who.int “malaria control” report

The content is authored by: Professor Mark Hepworth, Professor in People’s Information Behaviour, Centre for Information Management, Loughborough University m.hepworth@lboro.ac.uk This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.