W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources Oxford University Library Services – Information Skills Training WISER SCIENCE: Electronic Resources for Engineering Louise Colver & Nicola Mawer 15 th February 2006

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources Overview of session  Introduction to OxLIP  Demonstration of key resources in Engineering subjects  Search skills  Creating a search strategy  Finding the best search terms  Combining terms using Boolean connectors

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources OxLIP  Oxford Library Information Platform – gateway to all e-resources available in Oxford  Library catalogues including OLIS  Bibliographic databases (journal article summaries & tables of contents)  Full-text electronic journals and newspapers (TdNet)  Internet sites (subject gateways) and search engines

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources

Accessing OxLIP  Access from any Oxford University Computer by following the “electronic resources” link  Remote access:  Arrange before you leave Oxford by registering with OUCS:  Check on Oxlip/Title/Remote access  Register for a personal Athens account also on Oxlip/Title/Athens Registration  E.g. Web of Knowledge and Compendex

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources Bibliographic databases  Excellent for locating journal articles, book chapters and book reviews (NB. References only, NOT necessarily full text )  General and Subject specific coverage Journals more up to date than books  Some provide links to full text via new “TOUR” feature  Not all results are tied to library holdings  Different interfaces but similar functionality

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources Subject specific  For Engineering subjects – Compendex  Most comprehensive engineering database  References from 5,000 engineering journals and conference proceedings  Coverage from  Updated weekly  No password required from the Oxford domain  From outside of Oxford use personal Athens Authentication username and password  Access from Oxlip

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources Subject specific Other datasets for engineering subjects are:  Metadex for material science  INSPEC for Physics/engineering  Medline for medical engineering  Geobase for environmental engineering  MathSci for mathematical subjects  All are accessed through Oxlip

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources Interdisciplinary  Web of Knowledge (  Web of Science covers journals in all subject areas  Users can search across science, social sciences and arts and humanities  Citation Searching  Scopus ( )  On trial till September 2006  Provides an alternative to WOK for cross- disciplinary search and citation searching

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources SCIRUS  Search engine specifically aimed at scientists (  Searches over 200 million science- specific websites  Find reports, peer-reviewed articles, patents etc.  Good alternative to Google

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources Search strategy  Ask a clear search question  Break the question into search concepts  Select a range of search terms  Combine terms into a search strategy  Search appropriate subject resources  Find more search terms from retrieved records while searching

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources Searching techniques  Boolean connectors : AND, OR, NOT  AND to narrow the search  OR to broaden the search (synonyms)  NOT to exclude some terms  Common symbols for wildcards and truncation:  ? for a single character  wom?n will find woman or women  * for truncation or variant spellings  enzym* for enzyme, enzymes, enzymology etc.

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources OR, AND, NOT Airplane SafetyDesign

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources Sample search  We are interested in the design of reinforced concrete buildings to be earthquake resistant  AND = narrowsOR = widens  earthquake OR seism*  Search string could be:  (earthquake OR seism*) and reinforced concrete

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources Getting access to the full- text  Is it in an electronic journal?  Check TDNet (Oxlip/Electronic Journals)   Is it in an Oxford library?  Check OLIS (Oxlip/OLIS)   If not, try Inter-Library Loan from the RSL

W orkshops in I nformation S kills and E lectronic R esources What next?  Practice!  Subject advice from Radcliffe Science Library staff