1. Skills in Information Retrieval
Topic 8
Skills in Information Retrieval

2. 8. Skills in Information Retrieval
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the Chapter, you should be
able to:
identify the various information sources i.e. OPAC, electronic databases and Internet
apply the author, title, author-title, subject and keyword search strategies systematically
apply search strategies to the following databases: OPAC, e-book and, e-journal

3. OPAC Search Strategies

4. Searching Electronic Databases
Searching E-Books (Electronic book)
To conduct a search for a full-text online book, we can use “Ebrary”.
The easiest search - use keywords search.
Reading an e-book is different from reading a printed book.
One way to read the e-book would be to view the “Table of contents” and simply select the topics

5. Searching for Information on the Internet
The information on the Internet is not like in a library where all items are identified and can be traced by the catalogues and indexes.
There are millions of files on the web & anyone can publish on the Internet.
There is no control or filtering of the information published.
Searching the web therefore is a challenge and you need to develop a search strategy.

6. Search Strategies
In searching for information on the web you do not try to retrieve all the relevant documents on a topic of interest.
Just select a few key and relevant documents.

7. Internet Search Tools Address - type the URL Surf or browse
Search Engines (single search engines)
Meta Search Engines - submit a search across to many search engines at the same time.e.g. Mamma or Dogpile
Subject Directories/Subject Gateways - websites are organised into a hierarchy of categories
Libraries on the net
Databases - Other than the subscribed ones there are free databases of reference material on specialised topics
Usenet Newsgroup - join an discussion group or a usergroup

8. Question?
End of
Topic 8