1. Information Skills Training – Physics Selina Lock Information Librarian (Sciences) STL5@le.ac.uk

2. Session Objectives An introduction to searching for information. A demonstration of the key bibliographic databases.

3. What is a Bibliographic Database? “Bibliographic Database - contains descriptive information for publications, such as books and journal articles.” Bibliographic information normally consists of author, title, source (journal title), year, volume & page numbers. For our purposes it is an electronic way of searching for journal articles.

4. Types of Search Keyword/Subject Search. Author Search Citation Search

5. Keyword Search Question: Find articles about the evolution of black holes Identify the important concepts and words in the question: Evolution Black Holes

6. Think about variations of the keywords you’re using: Evolution Evolutionary, evolve, evolving Black Holes Black hole, collapsar.

7. Truncation

8. Boolean Logic AND This is used to combine search terms to narrow your search.

9. Boolean Logic OR This is used where various terms might describe the same object.

10. Boolean Logic NOT This is used when you wish to exclude a word from your search.

11. Keyword Search Strategy (Black hole* OR Collapsar*) AND Evol* The brackets are used, as they would be in a mathematical equation, to instruct the database how to combine the search terms.

12. Author Search Question: Find an article by Dr James T French. Search on: French J*

13. INSPEC Summary: The premier database for access to the world's leading scientific and technical literature in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computers and computing and information technology. Coverage: 1969 to present day. Updated: Weekly http://www.engineeringvillage2.org Note: Will default to searching Compendex so need to choose INSPEC.

14. Science Citation Index (Web of Science via Web of Knowledge) Summary: Science Citation Index fully indexes over 5,300 major science journals. The database provides coverage of research and scholarly articles, book and other reviews, editorial material, letters and biographical items. Coverage: 1981 to present day. Updated: Weekly http://wok.mimas.ac.uk

15. arXiv E-Print Service Summary: Started in August 1991, arXiv.org (formerly xxx.lanl.gov) is a fully automated electronic archive and distribution server for research papers within the area of physics. Coverage: Varies: articles have to be submitted by the author. Updated: Daily http://xxx.soton.ac.uk/ (UK Mirror) http://xxx.soton.ac.uk/

16. Other Resources Lecture Notes in Computer Science: http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=105633 http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=105633 Leicester e-link: http://resolver1.sirsi.co.uk/ http://resolver1.sirsi.co.uk/ Institute of Physics: http://journals.iop.org/ http://journals.iop.org/ American Institute of Physics: http://pubs.acs.org/ http://pubs.acs.org/ Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.comhttp://scholar.google.com