1. Find it! Defining your search
Nanchang University (NCU)
Queen Mary University of London (QMUL)
International Joint Degree Programme
BSc Biomedical Science

2. Learning Objectives At the end of this session you will:
Understand the reason why you need to evaluate
Start to define your search topic and built a first search strategy

3. Information is everywhere… but not all information is equal…

4. Questions to ask yourself
Who wrote it?
When was it written?
What is it?
Why was it written?
Is it relevant?
? ? ?

5. If writing an essay would you include this material as a reference?
If writing an essay would you include this material as a reference?
15-20 mins exercise: Divide class into smaller groups and give each group an object from the list. Give them 5-10 mins to read the article and then discuss if they would use the article or not…

6. Analyse the material with these questions:
When was it written?
Who wrote it?
Why was it written?
What is it?
Is it relevant?
After they found the links and started to work rest on this slide.

7. Tell us what you think! Feedback time!
Remember that any of the articles are possible to use, it all depends on what they are trying to write. But if they are looking to write something truly academic there is only one real choice.

8. Now… do you agree with the initial statement?
Is all information equal?
Give them a few minutes to mould over this. Do they agree?

9. So how do I go about finding relevant information?

10. Steps in finding relevant information
Useful preparation for finding relevant information:
Prepare
Search
Evaluate

11. STEP 1: Preparation library-sande@qmul.ac.uk
"Indian Spices" by Joe Mon Bkk - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Commons -
STEP 1: Preparation

12. Stages of preparing a search
1. Defining your topic
2. Developing a search strategy
3. Selecting an appropriate database
4. Combining search terms – AND, NOT, OR
Stages of preparing a search

13. How do I find out more about my topic?

14. Wikipedia
For basic information that will help you to get started and understand the essential concepts try Wikipedia

16. Try it out! Discuss with your neighbour what makes a Wikipedia article
more reliable.
Compare the Wikipedia articles about “heart” and “microarrays”. Discuss differences. How do you judge how reliable an entry is?
1. Find a Wikipedia subject specific article of choice (use either the English or Chinese version) and try to improve its content. Discuss with your neighbour what you want to change and try to do it.

17. Instead of Wikipedia, why not use?
The library has in its collections of online encyclopaedias. For example:
Oxford Companion to Medicine
Oxford Dictionary of Biomedicine
Encyclopedia of Genetics
And many more…

18. Developing a Search Strategy
To build a search strategy it is useful to consider:
How can I define the subject I am researching?
How many words and short phrases can I find that describe the subject in both it’s broadest and narrowest terms?
Spend some time writing these words and phrases down and you are off to a good start…

19. What words would you use to describe this picture?
When you see that a majority is interacting with the exercise turn over to the mentimeter site.
Go to and use the code

20. Developing a Search Strategy
Identify important concepts and choose keywords
These will include synonyms
e.g. animal cognition, animal perceptive theory
and related terms
e.g. memory; receiver operating characteristic

21. Truncating Search Terms
Many search databases allow you to search for the beginning of a word plus any ending using the symbol *
E.g. develop* will find develops, developing, development, developmental…

22. Phrase Searching
To search for an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks
For example the query "spontaneous alternation" will retrieve records that contain the exact phrase spontaneous alternation

23. Combining concepts Consider how to combine concepts
- using the operators AND, NOT, OR
- using specific search fields

24. Boolean Operators AND OR NOT animal AND cognition
Search for articles that contain both of the search terms.
Using AND narrows your search OR
animal OR cognition
Search for articles that contain one or both of the search terms
(useful for synonyms).
Using OR broadens your search
NOT
animal NOT cognition
Search for articles that contain the first term and do not contain the second term.
Using NOT narrows your search

25. Boolean Search String Game
Pasteur:
Saint of Milk
Pasteur and his anthrax dilemma
Anthrax:
Spreading the Disease
Pasteur:
A life in Science
Pasteur NOT milk
milk OR anthrax
Pasteur AND anthrax

26. Advanced Boolean Search Strings
If you want to make a search which combines two search clauses with OR and AND use parenthesis.
For example:
(material OR fabric) AND hermetic #example#
(material OR fabric) AND (hermetic OR airtight) #example#
material AND fabric AND (hermetic OR airtight) #example#

27. Defining a search
Decide on a topic you would like to research inspired by the words from the word cloud. Write down words which can describe your topic.
Try to be as specific as you can while choosing a topic
Use words present in the word cloud, but remember to not include words which has no bearing to your chosen topic

28. Defining a search Questions to aid you:
Now that you have keywords and short phrases it is time to combine them.
Questions to aid you:
Does AND/OR/NOT make sense to use in this instance?
Is it a PHRASE?
Would an ASTERISK be useful?

29. Share your search string with your desk neighbour and help each other revise them. Think of additional synonyms or related terms, and other ways of phrasing your search string.

30. Remember to bring your search string to Workshop 2 as you will be given a chance to put your search string to the test!

31. Lecture 2 Workshop 2 Next sessions: SCOPUS PUBMED
Teacher led exercises on how to search SCOPUS and PubMed

32. Contact your S&E team! Email: library-sande@qmul.ac.uk
Any questions in the mean time?
Contact your S&E team!