Searching at the TFDL September, 2013 Rosvita Vaska

 Be familiar with library resources and information literacy tools as they relate to the field of research  Understand the stages and processes involved in doing research  Be able to assess your need for information, search for and evaluate this information, synthesize this information with your own ideas, and present your findings in written form  Be familiar with a number of terms and phrases pertinent to research  Be acquainted with a number of methodological and theoretical approaches  Be able to cite print and electronic sources according to established standards  Acquire skills that can be used for any other assignments and courses

 1. Define your information need  Try and get a “sense” of what your topic is about.  Use general reference resources (i.e. dictionaries, glossaries, encyclopedia) to identify concepts and terminology central to your topic.

 2. Select information sources  Based on your findings in step 1, identify sources that will provide you the kind of information you need.  Will you search the library catalogue for general resources?  Will you use a database to find appropriate articles and reports?

 3. Define your search strategy  Map out the terminology you think will yield appropriate citations.  Decide whether or not to use controlled vocabulary (subject headings or descriptors), free text searches (word searches), search for a particular author, or a combination of these.  Consider using wildcards and truncation to widen your searches.

 4. Execute your search  Just do it!  If you are looking for books on shelves, consider finding one relevant item, locate it on the shelf, and then examine the other books that are beside it

 5. Evaluate the information you gather  Is the information you found relevant to your topic?  Did you find too many articles/books that are irrelevant to your topic?  Did you find too few articles to adequately cover all aspects of your topic?  Can you think of any aspect of the topic that is not covered in your search results?

 6. Start the process over again if necessary  If you find you have too few results, consider a broader, more general view of the topic.  If you have too many citations, consider narrowing the topic down.

 1.Global = The BIG BOX  2.Summon  3.Catalogue

◦ AND (narrows search, retrieving records containing all of the terms) OR (broadens search, retrieving records containing any of the terms) NOT (excludes terms from a search, retrieving records that do not contain the term following it.) Truncation/Wildcard * system* = returns records on system, systems, systematic ? wom?n = returns records on both woman and women (singular and plural forms) Nesting Parenthesis, ( ) keep related terms together If searching for an exact phrase, enclose phrase in quotation marks, “ ”

 Includes more than 30,000 titles in the areas of Business and economics; career and general education; computers, engineering and applied sciences; humanities; science, medicine and applied health; social and behavioral sciences and more.