Electronics and Computer Science Information Resources October 2012 Fiona Nichols

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

3 PLAN IN ADVANCE gg&feature=youtube_gdata_player gg&feature=youtube_gdata_player 3

Search techniques

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

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

Information from the Library (1)(1)

What are databases and why you need them uaNzU&feature=related

6 Where to look! The best sources aren’t free!  Key research is published in academic journals, conferences, etc.  search for this material in subscription-only databases See your subject page for databases

Access through subject pages:

7 Key to unlocking the Resources (3)(3)

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

How to search the databases  Topic search –keywords or phrases –controlled indexing (thesaurus) terms  Author/title search  Citation searching (Web of Science)

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

Truncation and wildcards To find words with a common stem (normally * symbol) Aero* will find: Aeroplane Aeroplanes Aerospace T o replace a letter in the middle of a word (normally ? symbol) Wom?n will find: Woman Women Colo?r will find: Colour Color

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

Or for areas outside ‘Science’

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

Time for you to do some work!  In Inspec or compendex, search for:  ‘Ontology-based similarity measures developed with regard to the semantic web’  How many results do you get?

20  Repeat the search inputting your query in the following format:  semantic web and ontolog*  How many results do you get now? 20

21  Carry out a new search using the terms ‘web ontology language OR OWL ’  Then COMBINE this search with the results of the previous search (TIP: use search history)  What number of results does this retrieve? 21

22 Exercise 2 – Search results  Try the TDNet link for any Item from the last set of results  Try both the TDNet and the ‘Full Text’ link for item displaying both options. What do you notice?  Try both links for item 9  Mark 5 items you think are interesting  Select the ‘Marked list’ and look at the export options  Look at your ‘Search history’ 22

23 Exercise 4 – Searching by author  Search for articles by Harold Chong using the format given on the search screen (Chong H*)  Number of results  Repeat the search limiting the results to those with Southampton in the address (Hint: select address from the drop down menu of one of the search boxes)  Number of results  This last set of results are probably all papers by the Harold Chong we are interested in. 23

So where else..? The Library Website which links to..  WebCat- the library catalogue, for searching for books and journal titles  Electronic journals via TDNet  More resources via the Subject Pages…

Full text & other sources  IEEEXplore  LNCS – Lecture Notes in Computer Science  ACM Digital Library  E-journals and e-books  ECS E-prints and other e-print servers  Patents  Standards

Internet search engines There are some good search engines –useful for finding free information  Google Scholar (general academic)  Scirus (scientific information)  ArXiv

Review slide: improving your search strategy  Identify the concepts of your query –List alternative phrases and keywords –Include both narrow and broad terms –Controlled vocabulary –Use truncation/wildcards –Use boolean operators  Identify any key periods of research  Identify any key authors in the field

Finding the full text If there is a full-text link or TDNet link try it If not search WebCat Journal articles by the journal title (use full title not abbreviations) Conference papers by the conference title (for IET/IEEE use IEEEXplore) Reports by author and title

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

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

If it’s ….  In the library –note the ‘call number’.. Per Q –find the item on the shelves –or follow through the electronic link if there is one

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Not in the library?  Request an Inter Library Loan (ILL) ECS allowance

Fiona Nichols

Advanced features

Advanced searching Searching by author Searching using controlled vocabulary/thesaurus Citation searching (Web of Science)

See library pages

Search smarter, Search faster  YouTube 

Study like a scholar, scholar!  You Tube  #p/u/4/2ArIj236UHs #p/u/4/2ArIj236UHs

 ture=related ture=related

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

Why journal databases? Because they  l ink to up to date information from peer reviewed publications  are usually well indexed enabling you to search in detail  contain abstracts summarising the articles retrieved  often link directly to the full text if it is available electronically

What information…?  high quality  up to date  relevant

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

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

INSPEC  Specialist computing and engineering database  Can search with Web of Science or alone  Allows searching using a controlled vocabulary (thesaurus)  Save searches to repeat in a future session  Set up ‘search alert’ for current awareness

Examples of combining search terms and using truncations

Same search, different database

Compendex  Mainly engineering and physical sciences  Searchable using a controlled vocabulary (Thesaurus)

Subject support 

40 Other sources for journal articles  Publishers Collections (Sciencedirect, Wiley, JSTOR) –Same quality of material –Limited to 1 publisher –Search facilities can be limited –Societies websites can have other useful information

Publishers websites  High quality information  Link to full text if we have a subscription  Alerting services often available BUT  Limited range of source material  Less sophisticated search facilities than major databases

Gateways and Websites- remember to evaluate

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

47 E-print servers cont  Varying quality: ‘pre-prints’, departmental publications  Search many at once through OAIster or Google  Soton e-prints as well as ecs e-prints

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

Changes for 2012/13  Just do quick recap of full text and concentrate on searching databases – show examples of them etc etc  Using td-net  Should have already had talks from me in years 1 & 2  Maybe use zappers