WISER Humanities: Key Search Skills Friday 2nd November 2007 Judy Reading and Hilla Wait

Structure of today’s session Presentation outlining useful search strategies Demonstration of databases to show how these strategies might work in practice Time to explore with assistance available

OxLIP Oxford Library Information Platform – our gateway to electronic resources Subject and title index  Library catalogues including OLIS  Bibliographic databases  Full-text databases  Internet sites (subject gateways)

Accessing OxLIP Access from any Oxford University computer If access is needed from a non-University PC:  Use the Virtual Private Network  Register for a personal Athens account

Use different sources for different types of information Books- OLIS catalogue, British Library, COPAC, WorldCat E-books – OLIS and OXLIP Locate text of journal articles – OLIS and OU e-Journals, Google Scholar Journal indexes - OXLIP Useful websites – INTUTE, Scopus Mailing lists – Jiscmail Dissertations and theses – Dissertation abstracts (N America), Index to theses (UK) Current awareness services – ZETOC and search alerts etc in various databases

Try and ask a clear search question eg essay title: Do people have a right to be happy? Is a utilitarian committed to saying that this is the only right that we have? Where should we be looking? What keywords should we be using to search? A mind-map might help in teasing out the associated terms

Strategy overview Use reference sources such as dictionaries, handbooks and encyclopedias Read up on the subject in a few key texts if you can before doing a broad literature search Make sure you have a system for storing your references – folder, Refworks or Endnote, a card index Find out about key sources for your subject Search effectively and use alerts to keep up-to- date

Keyword & subject searching  Keyword searching  Searches for terms anywhere in the field or record  Useful as a starting place but results can be less relevant  Subject indexes  Where possible tap into the subject headings or thesauri provided by the databases Citation searching (available in SCOPUS, Web of Science and Google Scholar)

Combining search terms Boolean logic Boolean connectors : AND, OR, NOT, NEAR AND to narrow the search OR to broaden the search (synonyms) Symbols for wildcards and truncation  ? for a single character wom?n will find woman or women s?epticism will find British and American spelling  * for truncation or variant spellings politi* for politic, politics, political, politically etc.

OR, AND, NOT, NEAR Television ObesityChildren

Tackling an unfamiliar database Check the coverage of a database to see if it includes what you want You can use cross-searching for some collections of databases to identify concentrations of useful references Use the help screens provided – check the specific conventions (e.g. do they use &, +, or “and”) Use any subject indexes provided Databases now often offer similar functions but you may have to delve a bit to see how they do it compared with one you are familiar with

Critical appraisal: evaluating search results and sources Academic credentials Peer review Use of source material Accuracy of references Currency Bias Relevancy Citation count

Putting all this into practice Searching for a known article  Example: Philosophers Index  Developing the search Searching for the unknown  Keywords and subject headings  Abstracts Full text searching  Examples: Past Masters, Oxford Scholarship Online

Searching Philosopher’s Index Navigating Search options Basic search Search Limits Advanced search Index Search Exporting records

Past Masters: searching Searching by simple search Power search Cross database searching Results Map Proximity search

OSO: subject searching Searching by keyword Quick Search Sorting your search results Advanced Search

How can I get help? Contact e-resources helpdesk Ask in your Library Contact your subject librarian Ask your presenters or

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