Searching the Literature planning a search using information resources effectively Discovering Society November 2009

Today’s workshop planning a search where to look finding references getting full-text presentation workbook & online tutorials

Gathering information 1 – definitions 2 – search strategy 3 – choose resources 4 – begin searches 5 – refine searches 6 – note the source of information used

What are you looking for? Planning is the key: look carefully at your topic break it down into concepts or themes e.g. “the effects of performance-enhancing drugs in sport” performance- enhancing drugs sport

Boolean operators AND –both words must be present in the record for it to be retrieved OR –either word or both must be present in the record for it to be retrieved

Boolean operators AND drugs AND sport OR athletics OR swimming

Boolean operators use the Boolean operators to help you express your search logically e.g. drugssport AND

Synonyms and spellings think about other terms which mean the same i.e. synonyms, or related terms remember alternative spellings e.g. US vs British drugssport dopingathletics steroidsfootball AND OR

Widening a search Other options with keyword searching: use truncation to pick up plurals or other word endings –e.g. cultur* = culture, cultures, cultural, culturally use wildcards to pick up spelling variants – e.g. behavio?r = behavior, behaviour use adjaceny for words appearing in the same sentence –e.g. nature SAME nurture = nature nurture, nature versus nurture, nurture as opposed to nature,...

Have a go … Using the search grid: choose one of the six topics as your search question break it down into key terms think of synonyms, alternative spellings and plurals, truncation, etc decide which Boolean operators are required

drug*sport* OR OR doping athlet*OR steroid*footballOR amphetamine* swimming AND

Selecting your resources What kind of information do you want? How much information do you want? Which “finding aids” cover this type of information? e.g. –Library Catalogue for books –databases such as WoK for journal articles –Intute: social sciences for web links –ESRC Society Today information on research projects

Searching the web Why evaluate? –Anyone can be a web author –No controls over what is posted on the web –Very little material is peer-reviewed or edited –Much of the information may be out of date See Intute Internet tutorials – on info skills page

Practical First connect to the internet From the Current Student’s Gateway page click on: Library | Subject information | Applied Social Sciences | Information Skills Training | Sociology - Discovering Society