Literature Search

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Literature Search
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What is a literature search?

• 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, 1999)

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Why do a literature search?

• Increases your own knowledge of the subject area
• Helps you identify work already done or in
  progress that is relevant to your own
• Prevents you duplicating work already done (and
  helps to avoid accusations of plagiarism)
• Helps you avoid errors of previous research
• Helps you choose / design your own methodology
• Enables you to find gaps in existing research
  and find a unique area for your
  own (adapted from Hart, 2001)

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The aim of literature search
The aim is to find academic level journal
articles, books, reports, treatment guidelines
and internet resources

• To retrieve information of direct relevance to
  your research
• To avoid being sidetracked or overloaded with
  material of only peripheral interest

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How do events, discoveries and ideas become
knowledge?
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Research Cycle
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What kinds of literature?

• The literature can be broken down in
• several ways. One way is
• materials in print format
• materials in electronic format

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What kinds of literature?
Another way based on its content such as

• books
• journal articles
• conference papers
• reports
• newspapers
• databases
• published statistics
• companies annual reports / accounts
• films, videos, broadcasts
• electronic databases
• the Internet

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Kinds of literature - books
Books textbooks / reference books / monographs /
treatises / anthologies (mostly print, some
electronic)

• tend to cover basic principles, facts and
  theories with worked examples, case studies,
  exercises etc.
• bibliographies useful for suggesting further
  sources
• But...
• information likely to be 3 years older than
  publication date
• difficult to find useful books if topic very
  narrow / specialised (parts of a book might be
  useful though)

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Kinds of literature - journal articles
Journal articles refereed non-refereed
journals / popular periodicals / newspapers
(mostly print, increasingly in electronic format
too)

• likely to contain recent material on a topic
• often very specialised content
• possible to trace how trends have changed
• useful references at the end of articles
• But...
• not all articles meet academic standards
• articles within journals can be difficult to
  trace and locate

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Kinds of literature - conferences
Conference proceedings published proceedings /
non-published papers (mostly print, some
electronic)

• hundreds of conferences each year
• can be very current - latest findings/arguments
• some subject to refereeing - quality control
• But...
• difficult to track down
• often duplicated in journals
• full text may never be published

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Kinds of literature - reports
Reports research reports / technical reports /
development reports / government reports (print
electronic)

• detailed research from a specific project
• good source of tabular, graphical statistical
  material
• usually very current
• growing body of literature
• But...
• might not be in public domain and can be
  difficult to obtain
• largely confined to science technology

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Kinds of literature - dissertations
Dissertations undergraduate / masters

• important source of primary material (because
  they should contain original work)
• should meet minimum standard of quality
• bibliographies / references can be useful
• But...
• can be difficult to obtain

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Kinds of literature - official publs.
Official legal publications statistics /
patents trademarks / standards (print
electronic)

• international bodies such as UNESCO, FAO, EU
• can contain information not found elsewhere
• dominated by science technology, medicine,
  agriculture (and allied industries), social
  sciences and education
• very numerous
• But...
• diverse formats can be confusing
• level of treatment varies

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Definitions - indexes and abstracts
Especially when you start looking for material
beyond a library, you will need to use indexing
and abstracting tools. Some are in printed
format, some are on cd-rom, but increasingly they
are available online (ie via a web browser).
Indexes provide sufficient information for you
to go on to find the full-text article either
here or in another library (eg publication name,
article title, author(s), volume / issue numbers
(or date), and page numbers. Abstracts provide
similar details to an index, but also include a
brief summary of the article. please be aware
that abstracting and indexing services do not
usually give immediate access to full text
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Planning your literature search
1. What exactly are you looking for?
3. How are you going to search?
2. Where are you going to look?
Tip make a checklist for each area
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Why plan the literature search?

• Avoid missing vital material
• You may want to include your search strategy in
  your thesis methodology section
• Tick off each stage of your search

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1. What exactly are you looking for?

• Depend upon what kind of information do you need
  to find
• Books, review articles, data, journal articles,
  theses government reports, Internet resources
  etc?
• How far back will you look for material? The last
  five/ten years?
• Do you plan to read material about a particular
  geographical region only?
• Do you want material only in Kikuyu, in English
  or in other languages?
• What questions do you need to answer?
• What information do you need to answer them?

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2. Where are you going to look for information?

• Electronic resources, print sources etc?
• Write down the names of the databases, websites
  and print resources that you will need to search

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Tools for locating information
1. Library catalogue (quality monitored)
2. Bibliographic Databases (quality monitored)
3. Subject Indexes and Gateways
4. Search engines (quality not guaranteed)
5. Microforms
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Tools for locating information 1
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Tools for locating information 2
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Tools for locating information 3
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Tools for locating information 4
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Tools for locating information 5
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Cant I just use Google Scholar?
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Cant I just use Google Scholar?

• Good points
• Easy to use
• Finds a variety of information sources online
• Searches World Cat for Library stock all over the
  world
• Bad points
• Often finds articles that need a subscription to
  read
• Often finds several references to the same
  article
• Does not include articles from some major journal
  publishers
• Slow to update in comparison to databases
• Lacks search flexibility

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3. How are you going to search for information?
Keywords

• Which keywords are you going to use?
• Create a mind map of keywords that you can use to
  search with

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Selecting keywords

• Organize your topic into subject groups or sets
• Analyze the keywords in each subject group or set
  to try to find as many relevant search terms as
  possible
• Use a thesaurus which lists synonyms and related
  words, to help you think of broader and narrower
  terms (and alternative spellings).
• Some computer databases have an on-line subject
  thesaurus which you can use to find additional
  terms during your search

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Selecting keywords an example

• Set 1 mature students OR adult education OR
  adult learning OR continuing education OR
  non-traditional students OR lifelong learning AND
• Set 2 academic performance OR academic
  achievement OR academic ability OR learner
  outcomes AND
• Set 3 higher education OR colleges OR
  universities OR post-secondary education

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Preparing a Search Strategy

• academic performance of mature students in higher
  education
• Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3
• academic performance mature students higher
  education
• academic ability nt students university
  

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Combining Concepts

• Search operator or
• academic performance or academic ability

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Combining Concepts

• Search operator and
• academic performance and higher education

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Combining Concepts

• Search operator not
  
• higher education not library

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Search Strategy

• academic performance of mature students in higher
  education and and
• academic performance mature student
  higher education
• or or or
• academic ability nt
  students university
• This can be expressed as
• (academic performance or academic ability)
  and (mature student or nt students) and (higher
  education or university)

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Find different word endings in 1 search

• Use truncation symbols to search for words with
  different endings
• Advert
• Advert, adverts, advertisement, advertise,
  advertising
• Symbols vary between databases check the help
  screens
• ?

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Wildcards

• Use ? to represent 1 or no characters
• behavio?r will find behaviour or behavior
• Use to represent 1 character
• Organiation will find organisation or
  organization

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Literature searching opportunities on the Internet
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Internet search tools - search engines
search engines
individual search engines
metasearch engines
queries several individual search engines
simultaneously and then amalgamates the results
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Examples of reliable individual search engines

• www.altavista.com/
• www.alltheweb.com/ (Fast Search)
• www.ask.com/
• www.google.com/
• www.teoma.com/
• www.scirus.com (specialises in scientific info.)
• smealsearch.psu.edu/ (specialises in business)

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Examples of metasearch engines

• www.ixquick.com/
• www.metacrawler.com/
• www.mamma.com/
• www.dogpile.com/
• www.profusion.com/
• vivisimo.com/
• www.surfwax.com/
• www.zapmeta.com/

Tips try to choose a metasearch engine that
removes duplicate results. Also be aware that
some metasearch services are providing results
where more than half of their listings are paid
links.
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Search engines pros cons

• most people head straight for the nearest search
  engine
• increasingly blurred distinction between search
  engines and directories
• good for locating specific information
• advanced search options (though not in all
  metasearch engines)
• can retrieve a lot of irrelevant results
• not good for browsing
• no search engine covers the whole web
• not everything on the web is indexed

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Evaluating web pages (i)
For academic purposes, you should evaluate web
sources as rigorously as you would print sources

• who is responsible for the document?
• are they credible authors?
• are sources listed so that they can be verified?
• is there an editorial input (quality control)?
• are biases and affiliations clearly stated?
• is advertising differentiated from information?
• are opinion elements clearly identified as
  such?

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Evaluating web pages (ii)

• does the document have a date, and is it current?
• is the site well-organised, well-written and
  easy-to-navigate?
• are the content, tone and style suited to the
  intended audience?

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A Searching Site for Microbiology
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A Searching Site for Microbiology
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A note on the Internet / WWW

• The internet can be an extremely useful tool when
  doing a literature search, but
• its not a substitute for a thorough and
  comprehensive literature search
• everything is NOT on the internet
• it is largely uncatalogued
• there is little quality control
• pages, and whole sites, move / disappear
  without warning
• skills are needed to retrieve what you really
  need

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Bibliography
Collis, J. Hussey, R. (2003) Business research
a practical guide for undergraduate and
postgraduate students. Palgrave Macmillan Hart,
C. (2001) Doing a literature search a
comprehensive guide for the social sciences.
Sage Gash, S. (1999) Effective literature
searching for research. 2nd ed. Gower O
Dochartaigh, N. (2002) The Internet research
handbook a practical guide for students and
researchers in the social sciences. Sage