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University Library Erika Gavillet Walton Library Search strategies – how to cover all the bases
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Erika GavilletWalton Library
Search strategies – how to cover all the bases
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Define your topic
Be clear on what you are asking
Keep the question as simple but as specific as possible
Analyse the elements of your question main subjects or concepts population group - sex, age range publication language publication date
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Sample question
What has been published in English since 1999 on the relationship between heavy drinking and adolescent behaviour?
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Analyse the question…
subject 1 subject 2 population group publication type publication
language publication date
heavy alcohol drinkingadolescent behaviour(adolescents)journal articlesEnglish1999-2014
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Your main concepts
Make a list of all your main search terms
Check for alternate terms and synonyms
Use thesauri and dictionaries, Use controlled vocabularies (MeSH
headings)Most indexes and cataloguers with use MeSHMeSH is NOT just medical terminology
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Population group
Age
Sex
Race
Socio-economic grouping
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Dates
- How far back do you need to go?
- Earliest electronic resources are in the 40’s but most go back to 80’s
- Might need to consult printed indexes
- Recent work? Use review articles, Cochrane, Web of Science, Scopus
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…choose your sources
Journals- Probably your biggest source- E-journals are searchable- Databases easy to use- May have to use printed
indexes for older material
Accessing journals- Library homepage
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Books/Textbooks
Not so up-to-date, but… ..A good search covers all the bases! Good for bibliographies
Use: British Library -http://catalogue.bl.uk/ Amazon - www.amazon.com
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Grey literature
eg. theses, conference proceedings, reports
Use: Zetoc (tocs for conference papers and
journals) Index of conference proceedings (on BL
catalogue) Index to Theses (Library databases) UK Clinical Research Network
(http://www.ukcrn.org.uk/index.html)
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Databases
Wide range of databases in biomedical sciences
Available via Library homepage
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Useful databases
Medline – US, 1946-, biomedical/clinical sciences
Embase – European, 1974-, toxicology, pharmacology, interventions
PsycInfo – 1806 -, psychology, psychiatry, behavioural sciences
Scopus – 54m records (33m back to 1996 , 21m back to 1823), multi-disciplinary
WoK – 1900 -, 40m references, multi-disciplinary
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Controlled vocabularies
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Controlled vocabularies
Medline/Cochrane Library – MeSH
PsycInfo – APA thesaurus
Embase - Emtree
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‘Keyword’ databases
Web of Science (Web of Knowledge)
Scopus
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Okay…
I have my search terms. I’ve chosen my resources.
Anything else I need to know about?
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Oh, yes…
Applying search techniques….
Boolean logic - AND, NOT, OR
To make your searches more or less specific.
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AND
BOTH of the search terms are present
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AND
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OR
At least one of the search terms is present.
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OR
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NOT
Only one of the terms is present
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Getting round word variants – truncation
Most databases use *So, disease* returns disease, diseases, diseasedBe careful, rat*returns rat, rats, rate, rationalise, ratio,
ratify…
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Extremely powerful search engine
Has INCREDIBLY advanced searching technology built in, as well as an advanced searching capacity, but…
…not a lot of people know that…
http://www.google.com/advanced_search
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Google – search operators
Many search features:
http://www.google.com/help/operators.html
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During the search process
Re-run searches
Sign up to alerting services
Keeping records
Potential scenario….Important article
Chase all refs Check who has cited the paper
Chase all refs Check who cited these papers
Chase particular author
etc etc etc etc
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Keeping records
Use bibliographic software:
EndNoteX7
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Research skills
http://faculty-tools.ncl.ac.uk/training
