1. 1 Dave Inman Project Research

2. 2 Process of Research Literature search Refine search Literature review More focus

3. 3 Timescale  Start early in life of project  Intensive in months 1-2  On-going throughout first semester  Further research in semester 2

4. 4 Sources  Past projects  Books  Library  Friends  Tutors  Journals / magazines  Library  Web  Tutor / friend recommended sites  Search engines

5. 5 Past projects

6. 6 LISA (www.lisa.sbu.ac.uk)

7. 7 Search for Journals

8. 8 Journals in Computing

9. 9 Electronic Journals

10. 10 Database Cross- Searching  Many subjects are cross-disciplinary and so the ability to search across several databases is a useful time-saver.  http://www.sosig.ac.uk/

11. 11 Library catalog

12. 12 Web Search Engines Two kinds: Manually updated (e.g. Yahoo!) Auto updated (e.g. AltaVista)

13. 13 Links to Search Engines http://www.sbu.ac.uk/home/gateways.shtml

14. 14 Links to Search Engines http://www.sbu.ac.uk/home/gateways.shtml

15. 15 Search Engine Display Chart

16. How can you search more effectively?  Plan your search in advance  Become familiar with advanced search concepts  Learn to use search engine features & search syntax  Review and refine your searches

17. Overview of Search Concepts  Boolean Operators - AND, OR, NOT  lions AND tigers  cheetahs OR jaguars NOT cars  Field and phrase searching  “Safari Corporation Inc.”  title: "Safari Corporation Inc.”  Truncation using wildcard symbol  lion*  Parentheses  (lions OR tigers) AND (zoos OR parks)

18. Example Search Topic The possible link between mobile phones and brain tumours ("mobile phone*" OR "cellular phone*") AND ("brain tumour*" OR "brain tumor*")

19. Search Engine Issues  Complex Boolean searches do not work on all search engines  Different search engines have different features and syntax  Case sensitivity - use lowercase unless searching for a proper name

20. Searching Features  Complex queries (Boolean, parentheses, truncation etc) supported to varying degrees  Almost universal:  Use of + and - signs eg +jaguars -cars  Phrase searching using double quotes " "  Stemming - sometimes automatic  Field searching and limits  title, url, date, language, domain  May be in separate "advanced" search page  May be in form of menus or check-lists

21. Relevancy Ranking Factors used to rank results:   Number of occurrences of word(s) on page   Where the word(s) occur ie more important if found in title or at top of page   Page contains all words   Words found near or next to each other   Link popularity - sites ranked higher if they have lots of other sites linking to them

22. 22 Intelligent Agents: WiseWire An ‘agent’ you can train with your preferences http://wires.wisewire.com/

23. 23 Google  Uses citations or "backlinks".  A page is ranked as important if lots of other pages point to it.  A page will be ranked more highly if lots of other pages with high ranking point to it.  Google! Looks at over a billion links.  Also try Google Print (http://print.google.com/) for finding info in books  Also Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/) for academic work

24. 24 http://www.zotero.org/

25. 25 References Chapter 4 of : Dawson, C.W. - Computing projects: A student's guide - Prentice Hall 2000 Parts © Netskills,University of Newcastle http://www.netskills.ac.uk/ Web tutorial on ICT research (http://snurl.com/projsources)