Faculty of Physical & Applied Sciences Postgraduates Library Information Resources 2011/12

Click on the Research Tab

Research  E-prints soton  Data management  E-theses  Bibliometrics  Getting ISBNs and ISSNs

E-theses Issues relevant from the start of your PhD – Inclusion of third-party copyrighted material (diagrams, tables, code etc) – Structuring your files to convert to elegant pdf  e-theses website – skills.soton.ac.uk/ethesis skills.soton.ac.uk/ethesis

Focus on  High quality information sources  Techniques for searching  Evaluation of sources and information  Exporting citations and referencing  Keeping up to date

Overview  Web resources  Database searching  Finding full text  U of S library service

Internet Searching There are some good search engines Google Scholar and many high quality websites and gateways Intute but many websites have no quality controls and need careful evaluation so one of the best internet resources for you is…

Direct URL Or via SUSSED Library Website

1 st break Get together in pairs for 10 minutes and use the library website to answer the questions given on the handout

Research information needs to be..  High quality – peer reviewed  Up to date  Relevant  Comprehensive

 Publishers websites  Learned Societies  E-print servers  Databases and Indexes Can be obtained from…

Databases and Indexes  up to date information from peer reviewed publications  well indexed enabling detailed searching  contain abstracts of the articles retrieved  may to link to full text where available  coverage can include conferences, reports, books, theses

but they don’t cover everything. So…

… remember other sources  Books  Theses e.g. Index to Theses  Patents e.g. Espacenet  Standards e.g. BSI  Technical data

Access  Institutional Login – iSolutions username/password  VPN – check iSolutions site for details

2 nd Break Get together in pairs for 10 minutes and answer the questions on the handout

Specialist databases and indexes

Searching techniques (1)  Search statements retrieve exact matches  Use Boolean operators (and,or,not) to combine search terms

Boolean Logic a AND b a OR b a NOT b aaa bbb Can be used to join different search terms

Searching techniques (2)  Use truncation, stemming and wild cards (symbols vary between databases)  Phrase searching  Think carefully about what terms to use and how to enter them

Truncation Finds words with a common stem (normally * symbol, $ in WebCat / Medline)  Aero* will find: Aeroplane Aeroplanes Aerospace

Wildcards Replace a single character (normally ? symbol)  Wom?n will find both woman and women  Engine? will find both engine and engines but not engineering  Colo?r will find both colour and color

Phrase Searching  Some databases search for a phrase if Boolean operators are not present  Others require phrases to be enclosed in quotation marks “ ”  Note that truncation and stemming do not always work with phrase searching

Examples of combining search terms and using truncations

Recording your results Mark relevant references in your search results Then:  results to yourself  export to reference software  save to a file

Finding the documents  Direct links from databases  TDNet – electronic (and print) journal holdings – links from Library web page and from most databases  WebCat – print and electronic holdings of books, journals, conferences reports and theses

Exceptions  Items not individually catalogued – Patents/ BSI/IEC standards – IET/IEEE conferences and standards (IEEEXplore)  Items not in UoS Libraries – Inter Library Loan (ILL) – Free material e.g. NASA Technical Reports

Web of Knowledge hosts a number of databases:  Web of Science  Medline  INSPEC  Journal Citation Reports

Use ‘Select a database’ tab for full details of the databases available on the Web of Knowledge Platform

Web of Science  Good for citation searching  Has a useful citation linking feature

Click here to see all citing articles Web of Science has a useful citation linking feature

These articles all cite the ‘parent’ article

TD-Net link

Following the full text link through TDNet

If you get this message, it is still worth checking WebCat and TDNet as links don’t always work

How to access Web of Science From the library home page at:  ECS/ORC subject pages  Resources page Using Institutional login or VPN when off campus

3rd break (20 minutes) Together in pairs (or separately)  Practice search techniques and cited reference searching, using your own topics or the examples on the sheet  Explore full text links

Advanced searching techniques  Citation searching  Controlled vocabulary (thesaurus)  Limiting  Saving searches  Current awareness/alerts

Controlled (Thesaurus) terms  Terms added to a record taken from a fixed list (thesaurus)  Searching these makes results more relevant by – avoiding concepts mentioned in passing – retrieving material containing alternative terms

Live thesaurus demo – Inspec

Search Compendex Click on the drop down boxes to access search options

and other features

Saved Searches  Search history  Saving searches  Alerts

48 Select ‘Search History’ to save a search or create an ‘alert’

To save searches and create alerts set up an account

4 th Break Separately or in pairs – 15 mins  Search a database with a controlled vocabulary/thesaurus  Alerts – save a search as an ALERT  Try links to full text

Sources of further help  Academic Liaison Librarians  Library webpages  Subject enquiry desk  Deskside coaching 

Other courses- book through GradBook  E-theses  Endnote/Reference Manager  Keeping up to date  Open access  Copyright  Bibliometrics  Data management (coming in semester 2)

Our blog  Science Engineering and the soton 

Fiona Nichols