How do you go about finding information?
Better chance of finding what I need
Better chance of finding reliable information
Better marks !
Saves time!
Managing my research results more effectively
Understand your Research Question
- Do you understand the terminology?
- Discuss your project with your supervisor / tutor
Identify key search terms
“Discuss the impact of parental mental health problems on developing children”
For further information or help please contact your Subject Librarian.
Contact details can be found at:
www.edgehill.ac.uk/ls/subject/
Truncation:
* This symbol will find any ending of a word
e.g. child* will find child, childhood, children etc
Don’t stop at keywords and concepts!
Wildcard Characters:
? This symbol is used to replace any single character,
e.g. wom?n will find woman and women
- Broader terms e.g. “Research” instead of “case study”
- Narrower terms e.g. “Depression” instead of “Mental Health”
- Synonyms or related terms e.g. “mental illness” OR “mental disorder” OR “mental health”.
Phrase Searching:
“quotation marks”
e.g “risk assessment” will retrieve more focused search results
Search Smart !
- Planning an effective search strategy
- Search techniques
- Save & reuse searches
- Citation searching
Citation searching
DO!
- Define your subject and your objectives.
- Decide how comprehensive the search will be.
- Choose the right tool for your purposes.
- Consult online Help for the best results.
- Keep a systematic record of search terms and searches.
- Remember that just because an article is on the database does not mean that it is in the library and that we have access to the full-text online.
Relies on entering the details of a ‘key’ author, journal article or book.
When searching electronic databases look out for these links:
‘Cited by’
related records
related articles
related documents
Available within many databases including:
Web of Knowledge / Web of Science
Science Direct
Google Scholar
Bring your search terms together
Execute and refine your search
Plan where you search
- Bibliographic databases e.g. Web of Science
- Specialist databases e.g Cochrane Library
- Discover More
- Google Scholar
- Books, conference proceedings, theses
- Blogs, Twitter and Discussion Lists
- Basic and Advanced Search Options
- Help pages
- Keep searching
- Search by document type e.g. report
DON’T
Don’t expect to find the information you need if you search for “tecnical” or “comittee”
- Overlook alternative spellings.
For example, if you want to find out about an American organisation, this is likely to be organization.
www.edgehill.ac.uk/ls/subject
Search History
Manage search results
Record your searches and results.
WHY?
- reuse where necessary
- cover all relevant search terms
- evidence of your search strategy
Saved Database Search History