1. Effective Searching Strategies and Techniques
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Effective Searching Strategies and Techniques
Getting the most from electronic information resources
This module is perhaps one of the most important of the workshop.
As more and more electronic resources become available (and the volume of information within them grows), effective searching becomes increasingly important.
Not only do we need to be able to conduct effective and efficient searches of these resources ourselves, but we need to be able to pass these skills on to others.
Hopefully, this module will provide some useful ideas and prompts in this area.
Credits: some of the content for this module is based on online materials from the University of Bristol Information Services – the content is used with permission.
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2. Objectives To understand the importance of effective searching
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Objectives
To understand the importance of effective searching
To develop guidelines for planning and implementing searches
To understand and gain experience of structuring effective searches
To gain hands-on experience of effective searching in a range of environments
The objectives of this module:
To understand
why effective searching is important
how to plan and implement a search: defining your information need and thinking about which sources you need to use
how to structure and effective search: understanding how search tools function so as to ensure effective searching. Many search techniques are generic and can be applied from one electronic resource to another. However, there are peculiarities with some resources that users should be aware of.
And finally to get some hands-on experience of carrying out effective searches. Quick searches and advanced searches can produce very different results and are appropriate in different circumstances.
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3. Effective searching can allow us to
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Effective searching can allow us to
find the materials we want amongst the huge number of online resources available
Google claims it searches >3 billion web pages
more than 20,000 full text journals are online
newspapers, databases, books, company web pages, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, individual home pages, etc, are also online
make efficient use of limited access to PCs and bandwidth
save time and money
Electronic resources can mean huge volumes of data:
In January 2003 Google claimed to have a database containing 3,083,324,652 web pages—and it is widely accepted that Google only gets about half of the available content!
There are also more than 20,000 full text journals available online—which means there are a very large number of high quality academic papers out there.
Add to this newspaper archives and similar online databases and we are dealing with a lot of information!
Its not unusual to get 1,000s or 10,000s of hits when doing searches of various electronic resources and it can be difficult to sift and sort this information. Before you know it we are faced with an information overload situation.
It some ways it’s a “nice” problem to be faced with—maybe it’s better too much information than too little — but we all only have a limited amount of time with which to find the best and most appropriate information.
Obviously quality and evaluation issues are important (and these will be considered later in the workshop), but narrowing down the number of ‘hits’ should be a high priority.
Additionally, with time online and access to computers at a premium, effective searching can be seen to be very important.
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4. these can be enhanced by understanding how electronic searching works
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
REMEMBER…
you already have searching skills that are useful in both the print and electronic worlds
these can be enhanced by understanding how electronic searching works
Anybody who is familiar with looking for material in the print world will have a range of skills that are also appropriate in the electronic world.
Faciltator: you could ask the participants to think about what searching skills they already have.
…BUT it is important to understand that searching in the electronic world relies on machines, and they do not have the same capacity as we do to interpret information. Therefore it is important to understand how these tools work and how to use them effectively so that we get the best results from the time we spend searching.
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5. Planning a search strategy
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Planning a search strategy
Define your information need
Decide which sources to use
Find out how they function
Run your search
Review and refine you search
This process can be started away from the computer
Think of this as a checklist that should be in every library user’s head.
The process of planning a search strategy clarifies your thinking about your topic and helps you ensure that you are looking for information appropriate to your task.
The following recommended process can be applied to any searching situation, electronic or otherwise, and should be encouraged amongst all users of information resources (especially electronic resources as these are often searched directly by users without the aid of a librarian).
Searching training for all new library users would be a great ultimate objective (if not currently provided)—it might save time and resources in the long run and should raise the quality of any searching/research done by users.
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6. Define your information need
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Define your information need
What sort of information are you looking for?
Specific information, e.g. a fact or date
Reference source, e.g. data book, encyclopaedia, dictionary, the Web or even a textbook are usually best.
General information, e.g. research areas
May require more thought, including how much information is needed and at what depth
Who is going to use the information?
Researcher? Academic? First year student?
This might effect which sort of information you require
Specific information
Are you looking for specific information (such as the date that the Antarctic Ozone hole was discovered) or for more general information (maybe an overview, or a literature survey, of a particular subject)?
Specific information can normally be answered quickly by using a reference source (e.g. data book, encyclopaedia, dictionary, the World Wide Web) or even a textbook.
General/research type information may require more thought, including how much information is needed and at what depth. These considerations will affect the next steps in the searching process.
You may also need to consider who is going to use the information. Information needs and requirements may vary from user to user and so there may be different methods of searching and searching strategies that are appropriate.
Think about the different kinds of information needs and therefore searching requirements that each of the user groups listed may require:
Librarians
Researchers
Academics
Students
Etc.
And discuss them with the participants.
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7. Define your information need cont…
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Define your information need cont…
Careful choice of search term(s) is vital
What key words do you think will appear on the site/article you want?
What key concepts is it a part of or related to?
Are there any synonyms for these keywords or concepts?
Are there any alternative spellings for your keywords/concepts
Are plurals or capitalisation involved?
Search terms are often subject keywords, but can also be names, molecular formulae or significant numbers, depending on what you are searching for and the source you are using.
Think about your subject, and what keywords and concepts it is part of or related to. It may be an idea to have a piece of paper and write down all aspects of the subject you can think of and then decide which are relevant to your search.
If you are new to a subject it may be worth finding a brief outline from an encyclopaedia, dictionary, textbook or a knowledgeable colleague.
Are there any synonyms (words with similar meaning) for any of the words (see next slide for examples)?
Are there any alternative spellings? E.g. neighbourhood or neighborhood, cooperative or co-operative, analyse or analyze, or different spellings for place names
Finally, do you need to consider plurals/capitalisation of your keywords? E.g. search for mouse and mice? Search for ‘New Scientist’ (which may lead you to the journal) rather than ‘new scientist’ (which may lead you to articles about people who have just become scientists!)
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8. INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Example: I want to find information about the health implications of water pollution
Keywords–’water’ ‘pollution’ ‘health’
Concepts–‘environmental degradation’ or ‘agricultural management’ or ‘health’
Synonyms
rivers, lakes, sea, coastal,’domestic water’, etc
‘oil spills’, chemical, biological, etc
Alternative spellings: none
Plurals: river(s), lake(s), disease(s)
Capitals: maybe the name of a specific lake, disease, region
This planning stage of the search can be done away from the computer, using pen and paper.
For example if I put in the search ‘water pollution’ I would get a huge number of results including topics in the fields of ecology, health, chemistry, shipping, agriculture, and more.
By including the appropriate concept (e.g. if I was interested in the health implications of contaminated water and used the keyword ‘health’) I could narrow down my search to match my information needs and get a more focused group of results.
Including synonyms (words with similar meaning) or related terms, alternative spelling, plurals and capital letters will also help ensure that I search for all documents that may be related to my query. For example, if I searched for ‘health’ ‘water’ and ‘pollution’ I may miss articles which talk about ‘illness caused by contamination of drinking supplies’.
Some databases, abstracts and indexes have a thesaurus which can help identify synonyms, etc.
As well as considering the search terms we use we should also be aware that the way that we input and combine terms will affect our search results, and depend on the source that we are using.
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9. Decide which sources to use
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Decide which sources to use
What sources are appropriate for your information need?
Individuals’ and organisations’ home pages
Newspapers and magazines
Subject gateways, databases, catalogues
Journals—titles, abstracts or full text
Reference resources, e.g., encyclopaedias, dictionaries
Books
Grey literature, e.g. government publications
Print or electronic
Choose which sources to use and search them out
Thinking about the subject and, bearing in mind your information needs, you can select the best information sources to use. It is often best to search for recent information first as good sources will lead you to earlier ones, through the lists of references at the end of chapter of books or end of journal articles.
If you need specific information try:
Reference sources including data books, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, handbooks, compilations of spectra, directories, or the Internet. Relevant text books often include specific data also.
If you need an introduction to a subject try:
Reference works including encyclopaedias, dictionaries and handbooks; textbooks, monographs, readers, theses or dissertations; broad subject journals (most have yearly subject indexes), a review article.
It is really these last two tasks that are most suited for using electronic resources although searching catalogues, etc, can be useful to alert you to the existence of a particular book, etc, even if it doesn’t allow you to see the full text.
If you need a comprehensive literature search on a subject use:
Databases, abstracts, indexes, and citation indexes, bibliographies , or reviews should enable you to compile a list of references to relevant books, journal articles, conference papers, reports, theses and patents which you can then go and locate. The Internet can also be useful, by using subject gateways or search engines, though be wary, as the quality and accuracy of information on the Web can be very variable!
If you need to keep up with new developments use:
Databases , recent issues of abstracts and indexes and current awareness publications will alert you to new references on your subject that you can then go and locate. Additionally, if your subject is well covered by a few key journals then you could look at these as they are published. The Internet can also be useful, by using search engines, bookmarking useful sites and re-visiting, and by joining relevant newsgroups (though be wary, as again the quality and accuracy of information on the Web can be very variable!)
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10. Electronic search tools
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Electronic search tools
help you sift through the huge range of information available
use keywords to browse or perform simple or advanced searches
all function slightly differently
Having worked out the most appropriate search terms and sources for your information need, it is now time to input the search. This can be done through a variety of search tools, all of which function slightly differently. We will go on to look at the different ways in which search tools interpret your query.
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11. INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
How they function
Electronic search tools may interpret your search terms using
Boolean operators
Phrase and proximity searching
Truncation or wildcard functions
Case sensitivity
Fields
Stop words
Relevance sorting
It is possible to do both simple and advanced searches and they are appropriate in different circumstances. Quick, simple searches may be good for an overview but they can produce thousands of results and are not suitable in many electronic environments. So we will now consider the more advanced search features.
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12. Boolean searching Uses commands (operators) such as AND, OR, NOT
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Boolean searching
Uses commands (operators) such as AND, OR, NOT
Different search tools may use different symbols
AND +
NOT –
Different search tools may use OR or AND as a default setting
Sometimes Boolean operators must be entered in capital letters (e.g. Synergy)
Boolean operators can provide a powerful way of entering your search as they allow you to specify how the search terms are combined. To do this you need to use Boolean logic or logical operators, AND, OR, and NOT or their equivalents on the system you are using. It is important to find out how the particular resources you are using uses these commands: some use symbols such as AND + - * etc. There is almost always a ‘help’ section which will explain how that particular resources works.
Although different symbols may be used to represent the Boolean commands or operators—what the operators do is the same.
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13. Query: I would like information about education or literacy
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
education
literacy
Query: I would like information about education or literacy
Query:    I would like information about education or literacy.
In this search, we will retrieve records in which AT LEAST ONE of the search terms is present. We are searching on the terms education and also literacy since documents containing either of these words might be relevant.
This is illustrated by:
the shaded circle with the word education representing all the records that contain the word “education"
the shaded circle with the word literacy representing all the records that contain the word “literacy"
the shaded overlap area representing all the records that contain both “education" and “literacy"
OR logic is most commonly used to search for synonymous terms or concepts.
Some search tools use the words ‘include at least one of these words’ to indicate an ‘OR’ search.
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14. INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
education
literacy
Query: I'm interested in the relationship between education and literacy
Query:    I'm interested in the relationship between education and literacy.
In this search, we retrieve records in which BOTH of the search terms are present
This is illustrated by the shaded area overlapping the two circles representing all the records that contain both the word “education" and the word “literacy"
Notice how we do not retrieve any records with only “education" or only “literacy"
The more terms or concepts we combine in a search with AND logic, the fewer records we will retrieve.
Search tools may use ‘include all of the words’ or + or a number of other symbols to carry out an ‘AND’ search.
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15. INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
education
secondary
Query:    I want to see information about education, but not secondary education
In this search, we retrieve records in which ONLY ONE of the terms is present
This is illustrated by the shaded area with the word ‘education’ representing all the records containing the word ‘education’
No records are retrieved in which the word “secondary" appears, even if the word “education" appears there too
NOT logic excludes records from your search results. Be careful when you use NOT: the term you do want may be present in an important way in documents that also contain the word you wish to avoid. For example, the an excluded article might say ‘In this paper I will be discussing the impact of funding cuts on education, and will consider the tertiary rather than secondary sector…’
Search tools may use—or ‘exclude these words’ to carry out a ‘NOT search
Query: I want to see information about education, but I want to avoid seeing anything about secondary
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16. Phrase and proximity searching
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Phrase and proximity searching
Using quotation marks allows you to search for an exact phrase, e.g. “information literacy”
Using NEAR allows you to specify how close to each other the terms you are searching for should be
Some search tools allow you to use phrase searching, i.e. if you enter the phrase in quotation marks it will look for pages with that exact phrase in it. For example searching for “information literacy” may give you very different results than looking for information AND/OR literacy.
The NEAR command is used in order to specify how close terms should appear to each other. You use the command like this:
information NEAR literacy
Please consider whether you really need to control proximity within your searches. Most search engines will try to find the terms you indicate next to each other, or within close proximity to each other, by default.
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17. Truncation or wildcard searches
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Truncation or wildcard searches
Truncation: place a symbol at the end of the word so you search for variant endings of that word
E.g. litera$ would look for literature, literacy, literal
Wildcards: place a symbol within a word to find variations on it
E.g. analy*e would find analyse or analyze
Different symbols— including $ * # ! : —are used by different search tools
These terms are often used interchangeably, but generally truncation refers to using a symbol at the beginning or end of a word to search for a portion of the word—this means you find any variations your search term might have.
For example looking for librar* would find libraries, librarians, library, librarianship, etc
Some search tools also allow you to use truncation at the beginning of a word, e.g, *phobia would find agrophobia, arachnophobia, xenophobia, etc.
Wildcards, or ‘internal truncation’ allows you to search variations on spellings with the symbol representing one or more characters within a word. For example col*r would find colour, color, colder, collar, collector, etc
Stemming is related to truncation and refers to the ability of a search tool to look for variations of a word such as its plurals, singular forms, tenses, etc. So a search for water would find water, watering, watered, waters, etc.
Many symbols including * $ : ! and # are used and search tools vary in how the symbols are used, for example some search tools require you to place at least four letters before or after the truncation symbol.
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18. Other variations in search tools
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Other variations in search tools
Case sensitivity: use of upper or lower case in search terms
Fields: searches in fields such as the title, URL or links
Stop words: searches may ignore common words such as ‘and’, ‘if’, ‘an’, ‘the’
Relevance sorting: relevance is measured in different ways in different search tools
Brackets may be used to order the search, e.g. (literacy AND education) NOT secondary
Some search tools are sensitive to which case you use in your search terms, with for example ‘The Times’ returning different results to ‘the times’.
They may also allow you to require your search term to appear in a particular field of the page, e.g., in the title or URL of the page.
Many search tools ignore very common words during searches, but may allow their inclusion if, for example, they are prefaced with a + e.g. ‘+The Times’
Different search engines will also rank or sort your results differently, maybe by how near the top of the page the terms you are searching for appear, or by who has paid them money to place their page first when someone searches for particular terms. Again, most search tools have a FAQs or help section which will explain the details of how it operates.
Some may also
use brackets to allow you to order your search e.g. ‘education AND (“information literacy” OR “IT literacy”)
allow you to specify limits, such as the time limit ‘within the last 6 months’ or language limits of ‘only documents in English (or French or Russian).
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19. Citation searching Also known as ‘cited reference searching’,
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Citation searching
Also known as ‘cited reference searching’,
Finds all material that cites a particular work
Many electronic resources provide easy to use citation searching or include facilities that offer this
Useful when cited work is of a high quality, by leaders in a field
Citation searching, which is also known as cited reference searching, is useful if you already have a useful reference to a book or journal article on the subject you are researching. It allows you to search forward in the published literature, starting from your known reference, to locate new articles which cite your known reference in their bibliographies (the lists of references usually found at the end of chapters, or journal articles).
Citation searching is not available on all databases or electronic resources, but when it is available it is can be a powerful tool to use.
citation searching is a useful alternative to other methods of subject searching, and can sometimes give better results. It is probably best to try various approaches
citation searching usually works best if your known reference is of high quality by leaders in the field, and limited to the subject you are researching
citation searching is not the same as searching for articles by an author
to make a citation search on a databases that supports this kind of feature, it is usually best to use the first named author of the reference you have, and its date of publication
the number of references you find in a citation search is not necessarily a measure of the quality of the cited reference — a notoriously bad paper can be cited often!
Citation searching is available on the following resources:
Web of Science, Some IDEAL journals, and many others are developing this feature.
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20. Run the search Take the terms/keywords you have decided on
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Run the search
Take the terms/keywords you have decided on
Find the sources you are going to search
Read the ‘Help’ page to find out how that particular source uses Boolean commands, wildcards, etc
Run the search
As you can see from the previous slides there can be a lot of variables in the way a search tool will run your search. So, it is very important that having decided on your search terms and which resources you are going to query, you find out how the resources you are using works. Look up the help/FAQs section and to help ensure that you find as nearly as possible the information you are looking for without having to sift through thousands of irrelevant documents or missing out any vital ones.
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21. Review and revise your search
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Review and revise your search
Hopefully you have found what are looking for, or at least places to start from, but
Be prepared to review and revise your search scope and strategy
Try new sources of information (familiarity is sometimes too easy)
Start again near the beginning of this process if you need to
Review and revise your search
You may find that you need to revise your search strategy in the light of the results you find, perhaps by using other sources of information, by searching using other search terms (or combining them in other ways in the search) or by using another type of search, such as citation searching.
The problem with the initial search may be that you are finding too many, or too few, or not enough relevant references. Another problem could be with the references you find; they may not be available in the University Library here, they may be to items that are in a language that you cannot understand, or they may be at a too advanced (or basic!) level for your needs.
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22. Collect the information
INASP Cascading Workshop: Electronic Journals and Electronic Resources Library Management: Effective Searching
Collect the information
Evaluate the information to ensure it is relevant, accurate, of high enough quality, etc
Collect it either via printing, pen and paper, floppy disk, , saved searches
Ensure you keep a complete record of the source of the information for citing later
Collect the information
Once you have chosen your sources and located them, search them to see if they include references or information relevant to your information need and subject. Points to remember:
The way you search a source will depend on what it is, and what you are searching for. Printed sources usually have a subject index, and sometimes an author and other indexes. Databases usually provide more types of search, and greater flexibility in searching for particular search terms or combinations of terms. Special types of search you may encounter include citation searching and combining search terms using AND, OR and NOT (Boolean searching).
Make a careful note of relevant references, or information, you find, perhaps photocopying or printing the relevant section (make sure that you are complying with Copyright Law) and be sure to note the source of any information you use as you will probably need to supply a list of the relevant references that you used.
If the source gives you further references to follow up make sure you copy them correctly, as a small mistake can make the item difficult to track down. Use the appropriate resource (this could be one of the electronic resources, the library catalogue, etc) and look up the references to find if the items are available locally or as full text electronic copies. You may wish to consider using a Inter-Library Loan service or document delivery service for material not available locally.
Remember that the quality and accuracy of information is important, and often the more up to date the better. Permanence can also be a factor, for example will an Internet site still be there when someone follows up your references?
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23. Use the information As a researcher As a librarian
Promote resources and facilities to your colleagues
Encourage the adoption of successful strategies and techniques with others
As a librarian
Promote high quality resources to your users
Encourage users to adopt techniques and strategies that you have found successful
Pass on your expert knowledge

24. Summary
Developing and encouraging people to use effective searching strategies is essential
The use of a search strategy checklist should be encouraged
Understand and use advanced searching
Boolean searches are powerful and under used
Learn the search routines for all packages and electronic information sources

25. Thank you Any questions?