ECS Database Resources for INFO 2009 October 2011 Fiona Nichols

What information…?  High quality  Up to date  Relevant

Three important questions...  What information do you need?  Where should you look for it?  How can you get hold of it?

Where do you look for information?  Google only  Google & Wikipedia  WebCat  Library Website & WebCat  Specialist databases, Library Website & WebCat

Where should you look for information?  Brigham Young Uni library's videos  on#p/u/5/2ArIj236UHs on#p/u/5/2ArIj236UHs

Direct URL Or via SUSSED Library Website

… try the Library Website! Go to either Subject Support or Resources

Focus on  High quality ‘subject specialist’ information sources  Techniques for searching  Other electronic resources  Exporting citations and referencing  Tutorials

Quality Sources  Specialist databases and Indexes  Full text sources  Learned societies websites  Gateways  Journal providers

Specialist Databases and Indexes  up to date information from peer reviewed publications such as journal articles, conference proceedings, reports, books and theses  well indexed enabling detailed searching  contain abstracts of the articles retrieved  may to link to full text where available

but they don’t cover everything. So… Don’t forget to check and see what other resources are available from the subject support pages

Why would you use these databases? Because  Google didn’t work  Need a comprehensive survey of all the literature that has been published worldwide  Need to be able to access the full text/actual articles  to find out about new research the minute is has been published  Want to use resources available by just one publisher

How to access them From the library home page at:  ECS subject pages  Resources page Using Institutional login or VPN when off campus

Library Website and then, choose Physical and Applied Sciences, followed by Electronics and Computer Science Select the Subject Support Tab...

Then select the relevant links

Specialist databases & Indexes Web of Knowledge INSPEC Compendex High quality, academic – world-wide coverage

Key databases ISI Web of Science General science database Citation searching INSPEC Compendex Specialist Computing. Scientific and Engineering Databases

Web of Knowledge  Wide coverage of scientific sources  Databases can be searched individually or together  Main databases of relevance to ECS – Inspec (controlled vocabulary) – Web of Science (citation searching) – ISI Proceedings

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

Compendex  Mainly engineering and physical sciences  Searchable using a controlled vocabulary (Thesaurus)  But does NOT give the full text!

Online help and tutorials  Remember … tutorials to many of the library’s resources and services can be found at :-  /tutorials.html /tutorials.html

Copyright – it does matter!

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

How do we use them?

Search techniques

Devise a search strategy Look at your own ‘search statement’ or project topic and devise a search strategy by selecting relevant keywords or concepts  Break down topic into components  Identify keywords, synonyms, alternative spellings & related terms  List relevant headings Then …put the search strategy into practice in the different databases and compare the results

Anatomy of a literature search Identify resources that cover your study topic Create a search strategy Conduct a search using search operators (i.e. AND, OR and NOT) Check results for relevance Changes to search strategy needed? From library resources, obtain the items to read

How to search the databases  Topic search – keywords or phrases  Author/title search  By journal/conference title  Etc etc

Search smarter, search faster  TbjxA TbjxA

Demonstrate a search  Using the  Keyword  Author

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

Searching Boolean logic AND, OR, NOT Symbols vary e.g. optic* Enclose in quotes “black body radiation” Truncation and wildcards Phrase searching

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)  comput* will find: computer computers computing computational

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

Truncation Question here

Examples of combining search terms and using truncations

Same search, different database

So... Decide on the exact form of the terms you will use Allow for any relevant variations in terminology and spelling Use truncation and wildcard symbols where appropriate

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

Describe and/or demo

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

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

These articles all cite the ‘parent’ article TD-Net link

Following the full text link through TDNet

If there is no (online) full text follow the Catalog link if present or check WebCat directly

Access via Library web site:

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

Saved Searches  Search history  Saving searches  Alerts

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

To save searches and create alerts set up an account

Full Text Resources

Key Full text Resources  IEEEXplore  ACM Digital Library  LNCS lecture Notes in computer science – Individual items not linked from TDNet

Full text key resources - Select any of these full text resources

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66 Finding information on the web

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…

Internet search engines There are some good search engines  Google Scholar (general academic)  Scirus (scientific information)  OAIster  ArXiv But remember that you still need to evaluate what you find

Specialist search engines High quality websites Full text sources Scirus Google Scholar OAIster ArXiv

these services can also be accessed from the subject pages

E-print servers  The information is free and usually full text  They contain the very latest research and ideas  There is no delay in publication  Institutional repositories may contain data and other information too

But…  Many have not been peer reviewed  They may contain inaccurate or poor quality material  As long as you are aware of the potential drawbacks they are a valuable resource

Recording your results Mark relevant references in your search results Then  results to yourself  Export to reference software  Save to a file

Recording references for your bibliography Record the full details of the reference Record how you found it

When I finish a search what happens to it?  Delete it  Lose it  Save it if wish  Export it if wish

Further Help  Enquiry points in the library  Fiona Nichols - -  The library website

Did you feel that using the zappers has helped your learning experience?  Yes  No  Why??????