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WISER Humanities: Key Search Skills
Friday 2nd November 2007
Judy Reading and Hilla Wait
Structure of today’s session
Presentation outlining useful search strategies Demonstration of databases to show how these
strategies might work in practice Time to explore with assistance available
OxLIP
• Oxford Library Information Platform – our gateway to electronic resources
• Subject and title index
Library catalogues including OLIS Bibliographic databases Full-text databases Internet sites (subject gateways)
Accessing OxLIP
Access from any Oxford University computer
If access is needed from a non-University PC: Use the Virtual Private Network
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/vpn Register for a personal Athens account
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/athens
Use different sources for different types of information Books- OLIS catalogue, British Library, COPAC,
WorldCat E-books – OLIS and OXLIP Locate text of journal articles – OLIS and OU e-Journals,
Google Scholar Journal indexes - OXLIP Useful websites – INTUTE, Scopus Mailing lists – Jiscmail Dissertations and theses – Dissertation abstracts (N
America), Index to theses (UK) Current awareness services – ZETOC and search alerts
etc in various databases
Try and ask a clear search question
eg essay title:Do people have a right to be happy? Is a utilitarian committed to saying that this is the only right that we have?
Where should we be looking?What keywords should we be using to search?
A mind-map might help in teasing out the associated terms
Strategy overview
Use reference sources such as dictionaries, handbooks and encyclopedias
Read up on the subject in a few key texts if you can before doing a broad literature search
Make sure you have a system for storing your references – email folder, Refworks or Endnote, a card index
Find out about key sources for your subject Search effectively and use alerts to keep up-to-
date
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
Citation searching (available in SCOPUS, Web of Science and Google Scholar)
Combining search terms
Boolean logic Boolean connectors : AND, OR, NOT, NEAR 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 s?epticism will find British and American spelling
* for truncation or variant spellings politi* for politic, politics, political, politically etc.
OR, AND, NOT, NEAR
Television
ObesityChildren
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 (e.g. 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
Critical appraisal: evaluating search results and sources
Academic credentials Peer review Use of source material Accuracy of references Currency Bias Relevancy Citation count
Putting all this into practice
Searching for a known article Example: Philosophers Index Developing the search
Searching for the unknown Keywords and subject headings Abstracts
Full text searching Examples: Past Masters, Oxford Scholarship
Online
Searching Philosopher’s Index
Navigating Search options
• Basic search• Search Limits• Advanced search• Index Search
Exporting records
Past Masters: searching
Searching by simple searchPower searchCross database
searchingResults MapProximity search
OSO: subject searching
Searching by keyword Quick Search Sorting your search
results Advanced Search
How can I get help?
Contact e-resources helpdesk [email protected]
Ask in your Libraryhttp://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/libraries
Contact your subject librarianhttp://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/collections/librarians
Ask your presenters [email protected] or [email protected]
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