1. PhD Session Kate Purcell, Subject Librarian k.purcell@bbk.ac.uk Tel: 020 7631 6062

2. Literature Searching  A systematic and thorough review of published literature in all formats  To establish that no-one else has already undertaken your piece of research  To find existing relevant research  To establish general patterns and areas of dispute

3. Literature Searching Key stages  Determine and analyse concepts in your proposal  Identify search terms  Identify relevant bibliographic tools  Consider search strategies

4. Analyse your research area  Who are the main proponents?  What are the main principles?  Were there any significant events?  What were the precursors and subsequent developments?  Are there opposing or counter theories?

5. Identify search terms  List key words and then consider….  Variant spellings  American English e.g.‘our’ vs. ‘or’  Plurals  Prefixes and hyphens  Alternative terms  Related terms – wider / narrower concepts

6. Bibliographic tools  Databases that help you identify what has been published in your subject  Which is best for your subject?  Check the scope and coverage  Become familiar with the interface  Same search principles apply to different interfaces

7. Search principles  Phrase searching: exact phrases in quotation marks  Truncation: asterisk after the word stem  Wildcards: for variant spellings  Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT  Proximity searching: specify how close keywords are to each other

8. Search principles Wildcards  A question mark stands for any letter E.g. organi?ation will find ‘organisation’ and ‘organization’  A dollar sign stands for any or no letter E.g. labo$r will find ‘labour’ and ‘labor’

9. Citation Indexes  Extensive subject coverage  Academic peer-reviewed titles  Lists who has cited an article  Useful for tracing research and development of theories  Identify key authors / journals in a field  Identify trends in research

10. Citation Indexes  Register for additional features  Save your search histories  Set up weekly or monthly email alerts with new results of your saved search  Set up citation alerts