How to do a literature search

1. How to do a literature search Emma Coonan Research Skills Librarian, Cambridge University Library

2. Session content • What is a literature search anyway? • Your research question and research context • Finding vs. discovery • Where, how and when to look

3. What do you understand by ‘literature search’ and ‘literature review’?

4. What is it? • Searching for (chiefly) published work about a topic of your choice • Aiming to get a sound grasp of your topic and its context • Joining the academic dialogue • There is no single, simple answer!

5. What is it? “Adetailed and organised, step by step search for allthe material available on a topic.” www.rgu.ac.uk/library/howto/page.cfm?pge=25989

6. Defining your research question Miller & DeJoy, 2010 (http://www.slideshare.net/praise711/assessing-collaboration)

7. Defining your research question A precise question works better than a vague one Topic: • The impact of television advertising on children Research question: • ‘Does television advertising have any influence on children’s eating habits?’ http://www.library.dmu.ac.uk/Images/Howto/LiteratureSearch.pdf

8. Defining your research question "Shape of a Ponytail and the Statistical Physics of Hair Fiber Bundles." Raymond E. Goldstein, Patrick B. Warren, and Robin C. Ball, Physical Review Letters, vol. 198, no. 7, 2012. www.improbable.com/ig/winners/

9. Your literature search plan 1. What is your research question? 2. What issue or problem does it articulate, or what gap in knowledge does it address?

10. Approaching information: finding vs. discovering

11. Finding ... things you know exist • Work by known authors (and their collaborators) • Supervisor/peer recommendations • Bibliographies • Citation maps • Catalogue subject headings

12. Catalogue subject headings

13. Google Scholar Citations Gadget http://code.google.com/p/citations-gadget/

14. Your literature search plan: finding 3. Which are your most useful ‘known’ sources? 4. What strategies will you use to ‘spin out’ from each one to find related material? • Work by known authors (and their collaborators) • Supervisor/peer recommendations • Bibliographies • Citation maps • Catalogue subject headings

15. Where to look: finding http://searchplus.lib.cam.ac.uk

16. http://searchplus.lib.cam.ac.uk

17. Discovering ... new material (to you) • Work by authors unknown to you • New developments or radical revisions in your field • Different terminology or spellings for your concepts • Making connections with another aspect of the field (or another field)

18. Finding vs. discovering “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. “There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. “But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.”

19. Where to look: discovering www.lib.cam.ac.uk/eresources

20. http://searchplus.lib.cam.ac.uk

21. What’s a citation database? • Citation database = scholarly search engine • Began as online indexes of journal articles • Expanded to contain other document types • May offer full-text links • Not comprehensive

22. What’s a citation database? Cross-disciplinary: Subject-specific:

23. Subject-specific vs. cross-disciplinary interface • ATLA Religion Database • Indexes about 2,000 journals • Citations: c. 1.8m • Scopus • Indexes over 18,000 journals • Citations: c. 47m • Still not comprehensive

24. Your literature search plan 5. What are your key concepts and how do they relate to or modify one another? 6. How many synonyms, alternative spellings, or overlapping concepts can you find for each of your concepts?

25. Key concepts (search terms) Restorative justice Rehabilitation Reintegration Transitional justice Identity Criminal Perpetrator Offender Victim / Survivor

26. How to look: relating your concepts • Victim OR survivor shows records containing either term (may include both) • Victim AND survivor shows only records containing both terms • Rehabilitation NOT health excludes a word/inappropriate context • “Restorative justice”shows records containing this exact phrase

27. Combining your concepts

28. Explore citation databases Cross-disciplinary: Subject-specific:

29. Useful extras • Citation sorting (and linking) • Alerts and RSS feeds • Full-text click-through (where we subscribe)

30. Useful extras ?can stand for a single character • ‘Wom?n’ finds ‘woman’ or ‘women’ • ‘Globali?ation’ finds British or American spelling * can stand for any number of characters (including zero) ‘Pastoral*’ finds ‘pastoral’, ‘pastoralism’, ‘pasteralist/s’ ...‘Pig*’ finds ‘pig’, ‘pigs’, ‘pigmy’, ‘pigment’ ...

31. Your literature search plan 7-9. Where are you going to search? 10. How do you plan to store material and citations?

32. When to look • As part of your initial approach to the topic or research question • Periodically throughout your research RSS and search alerts are very useful here • As part of your final writing-up process

33. Emma Coonan, Research Skills Librarian research-skills@lib.cam.ac.uk http://training.cam.ac.uk/cul Session feedback: www.surveymonkey.com/s/literature_search