PhD Session Kate Purcell, Subject Librarian Tel:
Literature Searching A systematic and thorough review of published literature in all formats To establish that no-one else has already undertaken your piece of research To find existing relevant research To establish general patterns and areas of dispute
Literature Searching Key stages Determine and analyse concepts in your proposal Identify search terms Identify relevant bibliographic tools Consider search strategies
Analyse your research area Who are the main proponents? What are the main principles? Were there any significant events? What were the precursors and subsequent developments? Are there opposing or counter theories?
Identify search terms List key words and then consider…. Variant spellings American English e.g.‘our’ vs. ‘or’ Plurals Prefixes and hyphens Alternative terms Related terms – wider / narrower concepts
Bibliographic tools Databases that help you identify what has been published in your subject Which is best for your subject? Check the scope and coverage Become familiar with the interface Same search principles apply to different interfaces
Search principles Phrase searching: exact phrases in quotation marks Truncation: asterisk after the word stem Wildcards: for variant spellings Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT Proximity searching: specify how close keywords are to each other
Search principles Wildcards A question mark stands for any letter E.g. organi?ation will find ‘organisation’ and ‘organization’ A dollar sign stands for any or no letter E.g. labo$r will find ‘labour’ and ‘labor’
Citation Indexes Extensive subject coverage Academic peer-reviewed titles Lists who has cited an article Useful for tracing research and development of theories Identify key authors / journals in a field Identify trends in research
Citation Indexes Register for additional features Save your search histories Set up weekly or monthly alerts with new results of your saved search Set up citation alerts