Search techniques in library research lecture

Editor's Notes

• #1: o Greet the students, introduce yourself, and briefly explain the importance of mastering search techniques for academic research. o Emphasize that the ability to find quality, reliable sources quickly will help them excel in their academic work. o Let them know that today's lecture will cover a range of skills, from basic to advanced techniques ,
• #2: Walk through the objectives. Let them know that the skills they acquire today will be relevant throughout their academic career.
• #3: "Understanding how to search effectively is crucial. It helps you avoid wasting time on irrelevant materials and ensures you’re getting credible, high-quality sources. This is particularly important for your assignments and future academic work."
• #4: "Boolean operators are the foundation of search techniques. The three basic boolean operators are: AND, OR, and NOT. They allow you to combine or exclude keywords in a way that precisely tailors your search results to your specific needs. Today, we’ll break down each operator and how to use them."
• #5: Show a live example using an academic database if possible. "The AND operator is used to narrow your search. It will decrease the number of results you get but increase their relevance.In many, but not all, databases, the AND is implied. For example, Google automatically puts an AND in between your search terms. Using AND, ensures that each result contains all the specified terms, which is particularly useful when you want to find sources that discuss two or more specific concepts together." For example, if you search search: college students test anxiety is translated to: college AND students AND test AND anxiety. The words may appear individually throughout the resulting records. Our second example, You can search using phrases to make your results more specific. For example: use "college students" AND "test anxiety" in quotations. This way, those exact phrases show up in the results as you expect them to be.
• #6: "OR is great for expanding your search. It’s useful when similar terms can be used to describe the same concept, such as ‘teenagers’ and ‘adolescents’. This operator broadens your results, telling the database that ANY of your search terms can be present in the results ensure you don’t miss relevant articles. For example, if you search teenagers or adolescents, your search will pull results with either term.
• #7: Use NOT in a search to: exclude words from your search and narrow your search. It tells the database to ignore concepts that may be implied by your search terms. For example: if you search genetics NOT cancer you get results that don’t include the term cancer. You want to be careful in using NOT since it can exclude relevant search results
• #8: Explain that by combining operators, students can create more powerful searches. "Combining multiple Boolean operators allows you to create more complex and refined search strategies. This example shows how to use parentheses to group terms and achieve specific results. For example, you can say you want (climate change AND agriculture) OR (global warming AND crops) ethics AND (cloning OR bioengineering ) Practicing these combinations will significantly improve your search efficiency."
• #9: keyword searches as the most basic and common search strategy. Explain that without quotes, search engines will look for each word separately. "You can start your search with broad keywords, then refine as you go. Try using synonyms or related terms to cover more ground.For exact phrases, always use quotation marks to avoid getting irrelevant results."
• #10: "Truncation and wildcards are powerful tools that help you expand your search results while still keeping them relevant to your research. Use them to include multiple forms of a word or account for spelling variations. For example, truncating ‘educat*’ with an asterisk will find all words starting with ‘educat’, such as education and educator. If you put a ? In place of a letter in a word, it will return results with variations in place of that wildcard. Like a search for ‘wom?n will return woman and women.
• #11: Walk students through the importance of filtering search results, especia Filters will let you choose to limit results by source type ( whether you’re looking for a book or an article), publications date to make sure you’re getting recent content, peer review status and more. "This Advanced search allows you to pinpoint exactly what you’re looking for and get highly specific search results . It allows you to combine multiple search fields with Boolean operators and filters. This is helpful when your initial search results are either too broad or too irrelevant. You can use filters to further refine your search in a database or the library catalog. You can specify fields like title, author, abstract, publication date, and other filters to further limit your results. This is especially useful for focused research projects." For instance, if you are looking for books written by someone called Adam Smith instead of about him, it is more efficient to limit your search to the author field. Example: Searching for "climate change" in the "Title" field will only return items with those words in the title and then you can add date filter for the last five years.
• #12: Mention that while general databases are good starting points, subject-specific databases provide more focused results. Demonstrate a search in a specialized database related to a student’s major, showing how much more relevant the results can be. "Some library databases are tailored to specific subjects. JSTOR is great for humanities, PubMed for medical research, and IEEE Xplore for engineering. Knowing which database to use can save you a lot of time and ensure you get the most relevant sources."
• #13: Introduce citation chaining as an advanced technique for finding additional credible sources. Live demo: Show how to find related articles through citations in Google Scholar or another database. "citation chaining can help expand your research. Citation chaining is a method by which you trace an idea or topic both forward and backward in time either by looking at sources that have cited the source you’re looking at or through the references that are cited in that source. Use the references or works cited page at the end of article to find additional, related sources. Google scholar and other databases allow you see who has cited the paper to discover more recent research. The layout and where to find it can differ from database to database." DEMO Example Databases: Google Scholar Preprint Citation Index/Web of Science
• #14: "The library catalog is your gateway to finding books, journals, and other resources. Whether you need a physical copy or an e-book, this is the first place to check. We offer direct access to online journal articles and ebooks.."
• #15: o Walk students through the process of requesting materials via ILL, explaining that it’s a free service at most institutions. o Mention that delivery times vary, so students should plan ahead. "If the library doesn’t have what you need, use Interlibrary Loan. You can borrow books or get copies of articles from other libraries. Just remember to request them early, as it can take some time for physical books arrive since they’re coming from a different library, sometimes across states. Some cases can take up to two weeks. Our books check out to students for three weeks at a time, but for interlibrary loans, the lending library determines the loan period. We can get journal articles faster usually, and they’re typically printed here or emailed to you.
• #16: o Introduce students to the idea of Open Access, explaining that many high-quality resources are freely available to everyone. o Show how to use Google Scholar to find OA articles or search in PubMed Central. Open Access (OA) materials are freely available scholarly sources. o Websites like Google Scholar, PubMed Central, and DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) provide access to OA articles. "Open Access resources provide free access to scholarly articles and books. Use databases like Google Scholar or the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to find high-quality, free sources."
• #17: o Recap the key points from the lecture. o Emphasize that mastering these search techniques will save them time and help them find high-quality resources for their academic work. "To recap, we’ve covered Boolean operators, basic and advanced search techniques, and how to access library resources. Boolean operators enhance searches by combining or excluding terms. Basic search techniques include keyword searches, exact phrases, truncation, and wildcards. Advanced search features allow for more precise results by combining fields, filters, and subject-specific databases. Access to materials includes your library’s catalog, interlibrary loan, and Open Access resources.Mastering these will make your research process much smoother and more effective."