1. Cambridge University Library How to do a literature search Emma Coonan Research Skills Librarian, Cambridge University Library

2. What is it? Searching for (chiefly) published work about a topic of your choice Aiming to get a sound grasp of your topic and its context Joining the academic dialogue

3. What is it? “A detailed and organised, step by step search for all the material available on a topic.” www.rgu.ac.uk/library/howto/page.cfm?pge=25989

4. Unknown unknowns “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.”

5. 1. Where to look

6. Your research sources: 1 Books:Newton (includes eBooks) Journals*: Newton ejournals@cambridge * but you have to know (and search by) the journal title, not the journal article title

9. Your research sources: 2 Journal articles Book chapters Conference papers Festschriften contributions Reports Reviews Patents ? Where can I find … Not in the library catalogue!

10. What’s a citation database? Began as online indexes of journal articles Expanded to contain other document types Evolved in some cases into storage archives May offer full-text links Not comprehensive

11. Text archive vs. citation database JSTOR contains about 1,750 journals (March 2010) full-text articles: c. 2m Scopus indexes over 16,500 journals article citations: c. 38m Still not comprehensive!

14. Explore eresources@cambridge …

15. Find selected subject resources

17. 2. How to look

18. Translating your topic into keywords Napoleon or Nelson (either name) Napoleon and Nelson (both names) Napoleon not brandy (excluded word) “ Napoleon Bonaparte ” (as a phrase)

19. Boolean searching

20. What’s in a name? Trafalgar = (naval or sea or maritime or marine …) and (battle or conflict or combat or action …)

21. ? and * (wildcard and truncation) ? replaces a single character ‘ Wom?n’ finds ‘woman’ or ‘women’ ‘Globali?ation’ finds British or American spelling * replaces any number of characters (including zero) ‘Pig*’ finds ‘pig’, ‘pigs’, ‘pigmy’, ‘pigment’... ‘Transfer*’ finds ‘transfer’, ‘transfers’, ‘transferable’, ‘transferability’ …

22. Search exercise 1 1.Go to www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources and find the SCOPUS database 2.Search for material published from 2005 onwards on sustainable transport, with particular reference to cycling

23. Search exercise 1 Try linking your keywords together in different ways and using truncation: “sustainable transport” and cycl* sustainable and transport and cycl* sustainable and transport and *cycl* Notice the difference in how many results you get by using various strategies

24. Search exercise 2 1. Return to www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources and find Web of Knowledge 2.Search for material on cyberbullying among adolescents

25. Search exercise 2 Think about synonyms and variations of your keywords: “cyberbullying” could also be spelt cyber-bullying, or might be referred to as online bullying Synonyms for “adolescents” could include teenagers, young people, youth … Truncation tip: searching for you?? will find hits on both young and youth

26. 3. When to look

27. When to look As part of your initial approach to the topic or research question Periodically throughout your research RSS and search alerts are very useful here As part of your final writing-up process

28. Where do I start?

29. www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources

30. UL homepage – digital library

31. Research Skills Programme At www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Courses/ you can … Find our timetable of subject-based sessions Book for hands-on information skills classes Request one-to-one training Download these slides and other handouts … or e-mail research-skills@lib.cam.ac.uk

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