1. Searching for Information
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Engaged Excellence in Research and Teaching Practices
Searching for Information
Research 1, Session 16, Day Three

2. Learning Outcomes By the end of the session, you will be able to:
Practice two techniques for constructing broad and narrow search strategies:
Boolean Operators
Concept tables

3. How Information Retrieval Tools Work
We will look at how the information retrieval tools work. This is a modern book retrieval system
Flickr.com/richardcawood

4. The Information Seeking Experience
Answer question
Determine what kind of information is needed
Critically analyse, synthesise
Identify words / phrases / synonyms
Refine search
Critically review / capture results
Critically select e-sources
Develop search strategy (broaden / narrow using techniques e.g. in title
Understand functionality i.e. how it works

5. Searching Document system Indexing system Vocabulary system
Search system
User interface ?
Search engine
Online database
CD ROM
‘inverted file’
Abacus …. …
Zulu
Web pages
Articles, references
EXTERNAL / INTERNAL
You can see that the researcher is in fact searching an A to Z index on the database. You are not actually searching all the articles on the internet or the database. The index would then be used by the database, which could be Google, to point to specific articles or websites.  
‘point to ‘records’’
‘records’
‘sort’
‘display’

6. Enabling Boolean Logic
AND, OR, AND NOT ‘exact match’ A AB B A AB B A AB B
ALSO enabling ‘best match’ processing and ranking

7. Databases: The example of Google
Google, for example, works as other databases and you also searching an index hence the words you choose are also very important bearing in mind the ‘stupidity’ (or simplicity) of the machine. Therefore, Google will only look for information using the keywords you put in the search engine. However it will try to identify some synonyms but it is questionable to what extent it will do this. In addition, in the sort stage Google will rank resources e.g. articles according to its algorithms. For example, the frequency of terms, the position, the co-occurrence (i.e. whether the terms occur near each other in the article) and also how often people have linked to the site or webpage.
Picture retrieved from: 

8. Enabling you to limit the search to parts of a ‘record’ in a database
Metadata e.g. creator
Words in these fields, records and databases can be processed according to frequency and position
Title etc.
All/some
words
Extracted
to the
searchable
index
Abstract/full text
Indexing e.g controlled
vocabulary
Classification e.g. DDC
fields
e.g. MARC Format, Common Communication Format

9. Search Techniques
Flickr.com/idfonline

10. Search Techniques Narrower/specific/known item
Known author
within the title field or other searchable field
Index term (controlled vocabulary [narrow term]) within an index field
using proximity or phrase searching
using the Boolean AND
‘free text’ term
using the Boolean OR
Index term (controlled vocabulary [broad term])
Broaden/unspecific/unknown item

11. Common problems Solutions generally relate to:
Poor choice of terms (too specific, too general, too few);
Wrong sources, wrong interface
Not using the functionality of the sources (structure of the book, not using fields/ proximity / date – the sliding scale of specificity)
Not using articles to find articles (chaining, ‘pearl growing’, citation searching)
Too many items
Too few items
Irrelevant items

12. ‘Hits’ Tips
Go back to the terms you have chosen and see whether you can be more specific
Use the advanced search of the search tool
Choose a term or terms that are not going to be common in many records in the database. Use more specific words.
Link terms using AND or ask for them to be near each other (if the database enables this)
Restrict your search to the title field
Ask for terms to be near each other
Restrict your search to fields that ensure that the records retrieved will have been indexed as about that term, such as the descriptor or keyword field
Reduce the number of items by limiting the search by date, for example, only getting material published in the last year

13. Mind Map example: Health implications of Water Pollution in Kenya
Illness
Pollution
Health
Diseases
Water
Bacteria Infections
Kenya
Rivers
Cholera

14. Concept ‘Clusters’ Health Physical Fitness Health implications
Health conditions
Disease
Bacteria Infections
Cholera
Now I have the areas that I’m interested in taken from the mind map I can start to cluster these into specific areas and also look for other terms that could be used to describe these areas. These terms are my search terms which I will eventually use to formulate search strategies for searching databases for information.

15. Concept tables
Transfer clustered terms / phrases etc. into a search table to:
Create a list of terms that you will use for searching
Link associated terms under an ‘umbrella’ concept
E.g. Globalisation
E.g. Climate Change
Clustered terms form search strategy

16. Concept Table Example Key concept 1 Key concept 2 Key concept 3 Water
Health
Pollution
Water management
Health conditions
Environmental degradation
River, Rivers
Diseases
Water Pollution
I take my concept ‘clusters’ and find related terms for the concepts and place them into a table. For example another concept which is often used for ‘Pollution’ is ‘environmental degradation’. Do you see that we are now creating a list of terms that can be used for searching?

17. Concept table example Key concept 1 Key concept 2 Key concept 3 Water
Health
Pollution
Water management
Health conditions
Environmental degradation
River, Rivers
Diseases
Water Pollution

18. Activity: Create Concept Clusters & Synonyms
Take the research questions you have identified, and start to cluster ideas, concepts, terms and keywords
Remember to identify synonyms
What terms are you going to look for in relation to your research question?
Health
Physical Fitness
Health implications
Health conditions
Disease
Bacteria Infections
Cholera

19. Activity Continue: Crafting a search strategy
Using a flip-chart or the handout, individually create a concept table and indicate how you will combine terms to create a search strategy Create a concept table & Search strategy (15 mins)
Key concept 1
[Insert high-level concept]
Key concept 2 [Insert high-level concept]
Key concept 3 [Insert high-level concept]
[Insert concept]

20. Activity: Research Database
Choose a research database (e.g. Google), or another database, and find one ‘article’ that relates to your topic:
It could be anything – including grey literature
Download the article as a PDF, Word or TXT file

21. Google Search Tips: Punctuation
Symbol
What you can use it for +
Include term in the search results e.g. +Malaria and +Polio -
Remove words from search results e.g. +Malaria –Vaccine
“ ”
Word or phrase in quotes, the results will only pages with the same words in the same order
See Google: punctuation & symbols that Google Search recognizes:
Source:

22. Google Search Operators
What you can use it for
Site:
Get results from a specific site or domain
e.g. Site:ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed malaria vaccination
e.g. Site:scholar.google.co.uk malaria vaccination
-site:
Exclude results from a specific domain or site
e.g. malaria -site:scholar.google.co.uk
Source:

23. Site: tag (locating information quickly)
Used to locate information on a site, containing specific keyword content: Format: No space between Site:website Not necessary to use Combined terms use speech marks “term”
Site: + the keywords
Site:who.int “malaria control” report

24. The content is authored by:
Professor Mark Hepworth,
Professor in People’s Information Behaviour, Centre for Information Management, Loughborough University
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.