THE STEPS OF SEARCH You have opened a new veterinary clinic in a small town, and want people in the vicinity to know about it. You need some new ideas of how to make your clinic more popular!

Analyse your topic! You have opened a new veterinary clinic in a small town, and want people in the vicinity to know about it. You need some new ideas of how to make your practice more popular! What is your topic? What are the important aspects of the problem? What are the main ideas – pick them out? What concepts represent the main ideas? Understand the question! What is the setting? What type of practice you have to focus on? How recent the material should be? Consider possible sources of information! Where do you think you will find good material? What sources will you use for searching material?

What sources to use? Depends on your topic, the type of data you need, level of reliability required, the urgency of the problem, searchability, etc.

Bibliographic databases (printed indexes) primary interest references for: journal articles, conference proceedings, but also books, chapters, grey literature, etc. fairly complete coverage of documents appearing in the fields of the database (what has been written about...), Leads to detailed description especially of specific problems, mostly well-founded, reliable data (peer review) full-text available in several steps currentness changing from database to database, journal to journal (in print articles on internet!). search terms (keywords) and syntax in standardized form, covering all the topics, free text search also possible, search tools provided

Library catalogues primary interest references for: books, audiovisual material, journals, other types of documents complete coverage of what is available in the library leads to detailed description of basic and specific problems, well-founded, reliable data full-text readily available (if not borrowed) usually not very current (purchase and processing of material may take several months, as well as writing and publishing books, etc.) search terms (keywords) and syntax in standardized form, covering traditional subjects, search tools provided, free text search usually possible in titles only.

World Wide Web (Internet) primary interest anything: mainly full text, data, but also references haphazard coverage unpredictable quality (depth) of dealing with problems, data not veryfied or controlled in any way full-text readily available (if at all...) usually very current, but date of last update worth checking search terms (keywords) not standardizes, syntax varied, help provided for searching which is basically free text, but some times broader categories provided

Finding keywords Main concepts: veterinary clinic - practice - popular Define and understand the concepts! Get clear definitions and ideas for synonyms if necessary. E.g. what is popularity? What are related fields, techniques, activites? What alternative terms could you use? Why do you need keywords? A computer searches for references with the term you type in! This leads to loss of references, information with different terminology, spelling, etc.! Where to look for keywords? Dictionaries, encyclopaedias, (subject) indexes, thesauri!

How to combine keywords? All the keywords in the same record: AND, occurring together (with no operator), + veterinary practice AND popular Any of the keywords in the same record: OR popular OR marketing OR advertising OR promotion Keywords excluded from the record: NOT, - veterinary practice NOT large animal practice Several keywords in the same sentence: NEAR veterinary NEAR1 (practice OR clinic) Several keywords in the same field: WITH (veterinary NEAR1 (practice OR clinic)) WITH marketing

How can you find documents on your topic? Analyse your topic Select the proper source Find keywords Formulate your query using Boolean and proximity operators or other syntactic tools Make your search more precise by limiting it in time, language, type of publication, etc. if necessary

Print or download hit list What types of documents were found? Analyse the references! –Journal article –Book –Conference proceedings

Find out if the document (journal containing the article, book, conference proceedings, etc.) can be found in the library? Use the catalogue! book titles journal (periodical) titles and holdings information articles (Hungarian Veterinary Bibliography) audiovisual titles Use the Internet!