WISER: Literature Review: Key Search Skills

1. WISER: Literature Review: Key Search Skills Tuesday 1 November 2005 Judy Reading

2. Structure of today’s session • Presentation outlining useful search strategies • Demonstration of a database to show how these strategies might work in practice • Time to explore with assistance available

3. Learning objectives After this session you should be able to: • Create and use effective search strategies • Have confidence to apply what you have learnt to new databases or information resources

4. Where to start? • If you can find a couple of relevant books read those first to get a general idea of a new subject • Check your library’s reference section for handbooks which give succinct overviews of research in an area • Spend some time thinking about the topic you are interested in – you may find a mind-map or spider diagram useful at various stages of your literature review as you can track progress of your ideas • Make sure you have a system for storing the references you identify – maybe use Endnote or an old-fashioned card index

5. The life cycle of information: locating cutting edge research • Find and join mailing lists and use directories to locate active organisations and individuals • Ideas may be first expressed in conferences and recorded in conference proceedings (Various sources of information for this – see OCLC Proceedings - also track down the web-sites of key organisations) • Original research is reported in dissertations (find listed in library catalogues, Dissertation abstracts (N.America) and Index to Theses (UK)) • Research reports are being produced all the time and are often informally published as “grey literature” – these can be found through the internet and by finding out about key organisations and individuals

6. Moving through to journal literature... Journal articles often next stage in process: • Specific focus, few pages • Journals vary – some emphasise research content, others share practitioner experience, others review research • Journal indexes not usually connected to specific library collections (although sometimes full-text can be found) • Citation indexes allow tracking forward in time as well as backward eg Web of Knowledge • Use the Library catalogue to locate journal titles – don’t use article title • TD-Net indexes the full-text journal collection in Oxford • Contents pages services can keep you updated (TDNet and ZETOC)

7. Books – what are they good for? • Books provide a more educational experience than journal articles • There is space in a book to provide background and develop ideas • Books usually contain older information than journal articles • Books can be located in library catalogues – of individual libraries and of consortia. Also web services such as Amazon and Google.

8. Reference works Reference works may contain older information but also exposed the longest to academic scrutiny Worth investigating your library’s reference section to find: • Directories • Handbooks and research reviews • Statistical information

9. Information on the internet • Can use services like Google which provide keyword searches – try several as will get different results – look at the advanced search options • Can use portals such as the SOSIG gateway • Can identify key organisations and look at their publications and their web-links

10. Keyword & subject searching • Keyword searching • Searches for terms anywhere in the field or record • Useful as a starting place but results can be less relevant • Subject indexes • Where possible tap into the subject headings or thesauri provided by the databases

11. Search strategies • Ask a clear search question • Break the question into search concepts • Select a range of search terms • Combine terms into a search string • Search appropriate databases/resources • Find more search terms from retrieved records while searching

12. Combining search terms • Boolean logic • Boolean connectors : AND, OR, NOT • AND to narrow the search • OR to broaden the search (synonyms) • Symbols for wildcards and truncation • ? for a single character • wom?n will find woman or women • globali?ation will find British and American spelling • * for truncation or variant spellings • politi* for politic, politics, political, politcally etc.

13. OR, AND, NOT

14. Sample search • A library user is interested in the influence of television viewing on obesity in young people. • Consider synonyms e.g. children or adolescents • Consider word endings e.g. obes* will find obese and obesity, child* will find child or children • Combine synonyms with OR and all other search terms with AND. Search string could be: • television and (child* or adolesen*) and (obes*)

15. Tackling an unfamiliar database • Check the coverage of a database to see if it includes what you want • You can use cross-searching for some collections of databases to identify concentrations of useful references • Use the help screens provided – check the specific conventions (eg do they use &, +, or “and”) • Use any subject indexes provided • Databases now often offer similar functions but you may have to delve a bit to see how they do it compared with one you are familiar with

16. OxLIP • Oxford Library Information Platform – our gateway to electronic resources • Subject and title index • Library catalogues including OLIS • Bibliographic databases • Full-text electronic journals • Internet sites (subject gateways)

17. www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/oxlip

18. Accessing OxLIP • Access from any Oxford University computer • If access is needed from a non-University PC: • Should be arranged before leaving Oxford • Register for a personal Athens account • If database does not use Athens contact OUCS to arrange remote access to the Oxford University network