1. WISER Social Sciences: Key Search Skills
Wednesday 1 November 2006
Judy Reading and Gillian Beattie

2. Structure of today’s session
Presentation outlining useful search strategies
Demonstration of a database to show how these strategies might work in practice
Time to explore with assistance available

3. OxLIP
Oxford Library Information Platform – our gateway to electronic resources
Subject and title index
Library catalogues including OLIS
Bibliographic databases
Full-text electronic journals
Internet sites (subject gateways)

4. Accessing OxLIP Access from any Oxford University computer
If access is needed from a non-University PC:
Should be arranged before leaving Oxford
Register for a personal Athens account
If database does not use Athens contact OUCS to arrange remote access to the Oxford University network

5. Where to start?
If you can find a couple of relevant books read those first to get a general idea of a new subject
Check your library’s reference section for handbooks which give succinct overviews of research in an area
Then spend some time thinking about the topic you are interested in – you may find a mind-map or spider diagram useful at various stages of your literature review as you can track progress of your ideas
Make sure you have a system for storing the references you identify – maybe use Refworks or an old-fashioned card index

6. Books – what are they good for?
Books provide a more educational experience than journal articles
There is space in a book to provide background and develop ideas
Books usually contain older information than journal articles
Books can be located in library catalogues – of individual libraries and of consortia. Useful examples include COPAC and Worldcat. See
Also web services such as Amazon and Google.

7. Journals... Specific focus, few pages
Journals vary – some emphasise research content, others share practitioner experience, others review research
Journal indexes not usually connected to specific library collections (although sometimes full-text can be found)
Citation indexes allow tracking forward in time as well as backward eg Web of Knowledge
Use the Library catalogue to locate journal titles – don’t use article title
TD-Net indexes the full-text journal collection in Oxford
Contents pages services can keep you updated (TDNet and ZETOC)

8. Information on the internet
Can use services like Google which provide keyword searches – try several as will get different results – look at the advanced search options
Can use portals such as the Intute: Social Sciences gateway
Can identify key organisations and look at their publications and their web-links
Important to evaluate information on the internet –
Provenance, Currency, Objectivity, Accuracy
Could try Internet Detective Tutorial

9. Locating cutting edge research
Find and join mailing lists (see and use directories to locate active organisations and individuals
Ideas may be first expressed in conferences and recorded in conference proceedings (Various sources of information for this – see OCLC Proceedings - also track down the web-sites of key organisations)
Original research is reported in dissertations (find listed in library catalogues, Dissertation abstracts (N.America) and Index to Theses (UK))
Research reports are being produced all the time and are often informally published as “grey literature” – these can be found through the internet and by finding out about key organisations and individuals

10. Reference works
Worth investigating your library’s reference section to find:
Directories
Handbooks and research reviews
Statistical information

11. 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 (eg 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

12. 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
The library assigns subject headings to all items listed in the online catalogue. This makes it easy to find books on the same or similar topics.
You can look up subject headings in a in a five-volume manual called simply Library of Congress Subject Headings ("the big red books").

13. Combining search terms
Boolean logic
Boolean connectors : AND, OR, NOT
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
globali?ation will find British and American spelling
* for truncation or variant spellings
politi* for politic, politics, political, politcally etc.

14. OR, AND, NOT

15. Evaluating search results
You may need to widen or focus your search depending on what you find
How relevant is it to you? May need to find relevance in related work.
Evaluate articles to establish how reliable the information contained e.g. is it based on research evidence – what sample size was used etc.
Important to evaluate for
– Provenance, Currency, Objectivity, Accuracy
Peer review process in publishing