WISER Humanities: Key Search Skills

Friday 2nd November 2007

Judy Reading and Hilla Wait

Structure of today’s session

Presentation outlining useful search strategies Demonstration of databases to show how these

strategies might work in practice Time to explore with assistance available

OxLIP

• Oxford Library Information Platform – our gateway to electronic resources

• Subject and title index

Library catalogues including OLIS Bibliographic databases Full-text databases Internet sites (subject gateways)

Accessing OxLIP

Access from any Oxford University computer

If access is needed from a non-University PC: Use the Virtual Private Network

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/vpn Register for a personal Athens account

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/athens

Use different sources for different types of information Books- OLIS catalogue, British Library, COPAC,

WorldCat E-books – OLIS and OXLIP Locate text of journal articles – OLIS and OU e-Journals,

Google Scholar Journal indexes - OXLIP Useful websites – INTUTE, Scopus Mailing lists – Jiscmail Dissertations and theses – Dissertation abstracts (N

America), Index to theses (UK) Current awareness services – ZETOC and search alerts

etc in various databases

Try and ask a clear search question

eg essay title:Do people have a right to be happy? Is a utilitarian committed to saying that this is the only right that we have?

Where should we be looking?What keywords should we be using to search?

A mind-map might help in teasing out the associated terms

Strategy overview

Use reference sources such as dictionaries, handbooks and encyclopedias

Read up on the subject in a few key texts if you can before doing a broad literature search

Make sure you have a system for storing your references – email folder, Refworks or Endnote, a card index

Find out about key sources for your subject Search effectively and use alerts to keep up-to-

date

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

Citation searching (available in SCOPUS, Web of Science and Google Scholar)

Combining search terms

Boolean logic Boolean connectors : AND, OR, NOT, NEAR 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 s?epticism will find British and American spelling

* for truncation or variant spellings politi* for politic, politics, political, politically etc.

OR, AND, NOT, NEAR

Television

ObesityChildren

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 (e.g. 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

Critical appraisal: evaluating search results and sources

Academic credentials Peer review Use of source material Accuracy of references Currency Bias Relevancy Citation count

Putting all this into practice

Searching for a known article Example: Philosophers Index Developing the search

Searching for the unknown Keywords and subject headings Abstracts

Full text searching Examples: Past Masters, Oxford Scholarship

Online

Searching Philosopher’s Index

Navigating Search options

• Basic search• Search Limits• Advanced search• Index Search

Exporting records

Past Masters: searching

Searching by simple searchPower searchCross database

searchingResults MapProximity search

OSO: subject searching

Searching by keyword Quick Search Sorting your search

results Advanced Search

How can I get help?

Contact e-resources helpdesk eresources@ouls.ox.ac.uk

Ask in your Libraryhttp://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/libraries

Contact your subject librarianhttp://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/collections/librarians

Ask your presenters hilla.wait@ouls.ox.ac.uk or judy.reading@ouls.ox.ac.uk

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