Doctoral School:Information & Literature Searching Session 1

Nazlin Bhimani

Research Support & Special Collections Librarian

Key Findings

1. Doctoral students are increasingly reliant on secondary research resources (e.g. journal articles, books), moving away from primary materials (e.g. primary archival material and large datasets).

2. Access to relevant resources is a major constraint for doctoral students’ progress. Authentication access and licence limitations to subscription-based resources, such as e-journals, are particularly problematic.

3. Open access and copyright appear to be a source of confusion for doctoral students, rather than encouraging innovation and collaborative research.

4. This generation of doctoral students operate in an environment where their research behaviour does not use the full potential of innovative technology.

5. Doctoral students are insufficiently trained or informed to be able to fully embrace the latest opportunities in the digital information environment.

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from the BL’s ‘Researchers of Tomorrow’ study

The course will develop your capacity to:

Adopt effective information/literature searching strategies

Discover and evaluate critically a wide range of literature and other resources relevant to your research

Use a range of search interfaces to find resources through the library catalogues, indexing and abstracting services, web portals and general internet search engines

Evaluate opportunities to use social software/emerging technologies in the literature search process

Organise and manage a wide range of resources using reference management software

Learning Outcomes

Plan

Week 1• Introduction• The Research Process, Searching Strategies, Resources at the

IOE, Group Exercise, Reference Management Software

Week 2• Education Databases, Other Social Sciences Databases & Hands-

on practice

Week 3• Citation Searching, Using Other Libraries (Senate House, British

Library & other research libraries & Hands-on practice

Week 4• Keeping Current using Zetoc, Open Access Resources including

Datasets, Digital Literacies including Social Media and Hands-on practice

Expectations

1. You will do the homework that is assigned to you after each session

2. You will practice what has been shown to you after each session so that you can ‘test’ the resources and review the help available to you via LibGuides and LibAnswers

3. You will share with your colleagues your experience, problems and successes

4. You will ask questions as they crop up so that they are timely and relevant to what is being discussed

5. You will take part in discussions and participate in the exercises as requested.

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Highlights: Newsam Library & Archives

The importance of Historical Collections

Why are these archives & special collections important? For example, government policy on education...

• Cyclical • Important to understand what has happened in the past• In your literature reviews, you may want to document the content of the

past (and current) policies as they relate to your research• You may also want to document the implementation and practical

application of the policies in wider educational settings

Relevant archives held at the IOE:

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Archives

• Institute’s own archives

• Archives of institutions e.g. National Union of Women

Teachers Society of Teachers Opposed

to Physical Punishment London Parents’ Ballot

Campaign College of Preceptors

• Archives of individuals8

Archive Collections LibGuide

Special Collections

•28 Special Collections•Mainly consists of books and pamphlets. •These are discrete, historical, collections of books (including textbooks), documents (including exam papers) and libraries of individuals associated with the IOE.

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Special Collections LibGuide

Managing Informationbibliographic management software

• is a bibliographic reference manager, which allows you to maintain a personal "library" of all your references to books, journal articles, theses, websites, etc. It can reproduce those references in your own writing - assignment, thesis, article, reading list etc - in hundreds of different bibliographic styles. You will need to purchase EndNote. Teach yourself EndNote.

is a Firefox (browser) add-on that collects, manages, and cites research sources. It lives in your web browser where you do your work, and all it's free. Zotero allows you to attach PDFs, notes and images to your citations, organize them into collections for different projects, and create bibliographies. Teach yourself Zotero.

is another one of the bibliographic management software packages available freely.  Like EndNote and Zotero, it can be an extremely valuable tool when doing research and composing papers. The program stores your references, figures, and PDFs all in one place on your computer, which makes retrieving these items easy. The social networking feature lets you network with researchers worldwide. Teach yourself Mendeley.

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Managing Informationbibliographic management software

• EndNote is supported at the IOE.

(Workshops (Introductory and Advanced) are advertised on the EndNote LibGuide)

• Read the blogpost “EndNote, Mendely or Zotero? That is the question.” on Newsam News

• Watch videos or follow on-line tours and/or teach yourself the reference management software by following the instructions on the LibGuides at libguides.ioe.ac.uk)

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The Literature Search

Definition:

“. . . a systematic and thorough search of all types of published literature in order to identify as many items as possible that are relevant to a particular topic.”

Gash, S. (2000)  Effective Literature Searching for Research. 2nd ed. Aldershot:  Gower Publishing

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When do I stop?

How long, how far, how detailed, how much . . . and when do I stop?!

• DO NOT allow the literature review to service your research; the literature review should frame/scaffold your research

• The WHY is more important than the HOW

• The bibliography demonstrates ACADEMIC RIGOUR

- (use diverse sources – both primary/original sources and secondary sources to scaffold your argument; demonstrate creativity in the use of new scholarship in new ways (TV, video, film, podcasts, vodcasts (interviews etc), blogs etc)

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The Research Process:7 steps1. Identify research question

2. Background reading

3. Fine tune the question

4. Type & amount of information

5. Choose access tools

6. Examine results

7. Evaluate sources

…repeat as necessary to

fine-tune your research question...

Research Cycle

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Sample research question

What research has been done on bullying and classroom teaching?

1. Begin by defining your question. To do this, you must

a. Break it down into concepts

b. List the words or phrases that you can use for each concept listing alternative spellings, words etc.

2. Do a few searches and repeat the process until you have fine-tuned your question.

How have primary school teachers managed peer aggression UK classrooms in the last decade?

Pupil behaviour

Racial harassment

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Bullying

Mental cruelty

Aggression

Violence

BEHAVIOUR

Antisocial behaviour

Disruptive Behaviour

Vandalism

RACISM

Interpersonal conflict

pupils attitude Teacher’s

attitude

Teacher’s behaviour

Teacher effectiveness

Teaching skills

Classroom discipline

Teacher-student relationship

Teaching practice

Educational materials

Educational environment

Curriculum development

Racial discrimination

Juvenile delinquents

Classroom management

Educational policy

Emotional & Behavioural difficulties

Classroom teaching

Classroom behaviour Teacher’s

role

Teacher’s knowledge & experience

Education: Teaching & Learning(Theory & Practice)

Psychology

Social Sciences

Learning strategies

Peer violence

Government/Policy/LawGovernment/Law

Behavioural Sciences

(Psychology)

Constructing a search

1. Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias and Thesauri to collect– Individual keywords– Consider spelling e.g. behaviour vs. behaviour– Terminology e.g. High School vs. Secondary School etc.

2. Background Reading– Key concepts and theories– Phrases e.g. “Theory of Mind”

3. Logic– Analyse your topic into constituent components/concepts– Phrases e.g. “Theory of Mind” or “Reflective practice”

4. Truncation & Symbol– Truncation is usually possible e.g. poss? poss* or sometimes poss$

5. Type of material & date range– Data, case studies, peer-reviewed journal articles, archives, special collections

etc.

Boolean Operators

AND OR

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NOT

When using AND in this search expression, results retrieved will contain both blue and yellow information. The results will not include those documents containing only blue or only yellow information.

When using OR in this search expression, results retrieved will contain either blue information, or yellow information, or blue and yellow information together. Such a search will not merely retrieve documents containing only blue information or only yellow information. In the diagram the documents retrieved by using this search expression are contained within all the colour areas.

When using NOT in this search expression, results will contain only blue. The NOT operator will exclude yellow completely and thus any green information will be excluded also. It is important, therefore, to be careful when using this operator in order to avoid hindering your search. In this diagram the documents retrieved by using this search expression are contained within the blue area.

NOT

NOT

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Another example:Gender issues in school science achievement

Gender or girl* or women or sex differences or sex discrimination or sex bias or boy* (or ……)

Science or physics or chemistry or biology (or ……)

Achievement or underachievement or success or failure or attitudes or teacher expectations (or ……)

Group exercise

1. Assessment of dance and drama

2. The effective use of humour in the classroom

3.  Technical education and vocational training in Nigeria and Ghana:  the Colonial Legacy

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LibGuidesfrom the IOE (libguides.ioe.ac.uk)

3 categories: Collections , How to ... Services

Getting Started Accessing Resources Remotely

(see page on EResources Access) Finding Resources Searching (see page on Boolean Logic) Researching (see Research Cycle, Types of

Resources and Open Access Resources Referencing Software: EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero Journals and Databases

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Any questions?

Library Support

In person: Library – Level 4

Website: http://libanswers.ioe.ac.uk/

Text: +44 (0)20 3322 1810

Computing Enquiries

In person: Library – Level 4

Email: ComputerHelpdesk@ioe.ac.uk

Telephone: 020 7612 6696