Finding Information

Editor's Notes

• #7: Example in image: if you get the reference, it is far more likely that the little storm troopers will got lots of information telling them about what droids they are not looking for. Google does cope better with typing in a sentence or question than many academic databases, but as professional researchers it is not the best way of searching and you should be trying more appropriate techniques, and many of the databases you may need to, or should be using, will not work very well or at all if you search in this way.
• #8: Finally, this is about using those key sources you locate to work for you:- - providing you with a rich source of pre-selected earlier research from their own list of references - citation searching to see how the ideas and research in the key sources you have identified have been taken and developed further
• #13: - Now itself perceived as not politically acceptable and being replaced by terms including “intellectual disability”. - Still in use in the United States and by the WHO sometime after the phrase became less commonly used in United Kingdom. - Changes in terminology and spelling especially important when searching historic sources such as newspapers, official publication and pamphlet collections.
• #15: So, if you only searched for “Donut” you are only missing 5.3% of results. But might these be some key articles? And how does this scale if you happened to be searching for “donut” AND “zebra” - (243 results on 14th October 2014) neuropsychology, ornithology, domestic abuse, how our brains work when translating as we read,
• #17: - Many publications have their own terminology and spelling style guide. I can only imagine the panic in newspaper offices around the globe as ISIS/ISIL/IS kept changing their name. Will return to alternative spellings in a minute…
• #32: You do need to check for each database what search tools are available and how to use them… these are just five examples used by some of our key databases which work in roughly the same way.
• #33: At this point, you also need to recognise that each of these ‘concepts’ could be described in multiple ways, be phrased in different ways or cover a broad range of more focussed topics or areas of interest…
• #34: Using various tools we have just mentioned:- Truncation tool Wildcard Phrase searching
• #38: [animations on slide] GOOGLE. Shows use of different search tips to narrow down from over 12 million results, to 8 results. Phrase searching: reduces number of results by 90% (25% in June 2013) Additional keywords: Focusses search, reduces by 40% (75% in June 2013) Exclude results: filter out 99% of results Limit to UK academic sites: Filters out 90% of results…. Good indicator of range of content covered by Google (note, not perfect as by doing this are filtering out academic blogs, most news coverage etc.) Faceted search: Searching a particular part of a document to add focus. In title of document (in part reliant on authors following web standards).
• #39: AND – the more search terms you include, logically the fewer the number of results as results have to mention all terms. Reason 2 for not typing in a sentence - stop words – Google ignores many terms in searches you might enter, meaning entering a sentence or question is often just a waste of time typing… can include: HE, SHE, AT, THE, A, ZERO, DESCRIBED, UPWARDS, LEAST, THIRD (refer to handout). NOT – be careful, may remove results which may have been useful and just happened to mention a term in passing, or in reference to something else OR - broadens your search
• #40: Phrase searching – as seen, can have a significant effect. Doesn’t always work (even though Google promote use on their own help pages) but is much better now than was a few years ago Intitle – does rely on authors of web pages coding their site properly, and the term you are searching for being the key focus of the document (and not just one of several focuses) but can massively reduce number of results. Site limitation - I personally find this useful, but if you wish to search different domains/sites I find it easier to run separate searches, especially given different terminology between countries/regions (eg retardation used far more recently in US healthcare terminology than in the UK, whilst homicide is obviously a US term so if limiting to UK sites will be of less use). Synonyms and related terms – useful but difficult to always identify what terms are being searched.
• #41: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26296445@N05/5917135851
• #43: You do need to check for each database what search tools are available and how to use them… these are just five examples used by some of our key databases which work in roughly the same way.
• #45: Demo 1
• #46: Demo 1
• #49: Plug ‘Historical Collections’ and ‘Beyond Academic Literature’ sessions
• #50: Additional assistance on subject specific databases from a team of Liaison Librarians
• #51: Check: Show how ConneXions works: use Library Catalogue to look for ‘Catholic Historical review’ Show how doesn’t work with ‘Catholic Biblical Quarterly’
• #53: Re sconul how do know what is elsewhere – COPAC and Worldcat