Looking for Literature Before you search

1
Looking for Literature Before you search

• First make sure you have properly defined your
  topic (tipnot too big to be manageable, not so
  new that no academic literature is available)
• Ask yourself questions - How, what, when, where?
  Helps you think about aspects
• What do you already know?
• What do you need to know?
• (perhaps Mind Map your topic at this stage?)

2
The Literature Search

• Points to remember
• Searching Tips

3
Define your search parameters

• What is your time scale? (5yrs? 15yrs?)
• Languages? (English only or others remember
  access to foreign language material may be
  limited)
• Geography? (e.g. just UK or multi-country?)
• Sector? (e.g. defence, manufacturing)
• Type of material? (e.g. books, journal articles,
  personal contacts, statistical data)

4
Keywords or concepts

• Think carefully about these before you even sit
  down at the computer or open a book
• What are your keywords?
• Consider broader/narrower terms in case your
  first search produces few/too many results e.g.
  cars is broader than luxury cars
• American spellings or terminology, e.g.
  defense/defence
• Synonyms/near synonyms
• You could even try to generate a search statement
  linking your key concepts

5
Define your topic

• Topic How does stress affect workplace
  bullying?

6
Generate alternatives

• Stress - pressure, strain, anxiety, tension,
  worry
• Workplace work, work place
• Bullying harassment, discrimination,
  persecution, pestering, mobbing

7
Search Statement to include alternatives

• (stress or anxiety or worry) AND (work or work
  place or workplace) AND (bullying or harassment
  or persecution)
• Some databases will let you enter a search like
  this with some other tools you would have to
  repeat your search with alternatives

8
Academic publishing from the new to the accepted

• Research - informal discussion, email discussion
  lists
• Conference papers and working papers
• Journal articles and review articles
• Books (Monographs)
• Textbooks, dictionaries,handbooks,
  encyclopaedias
• If you dont know too much about a topic try
  looking for basic details in a textbook or
  encyclopaedia first to help familiarise yourself
  with the vocabulary THEN look for other sorts of
  material

9
Tools to help you find references to published
documents

• Encyclopaedias and/or dictionaries
  
• Library Catalogues
• Printed bibliographies
• Review Journals
• Abstracts and Indexes

• CD-ROMs
• Citation Indexes
• Specialist Indexes (e.g to conferences or
  dissertations)
• Internet

10
Databases - Using their individual strengths and
features

• Think before you even switch on
• Always read the help screens first - what
  operators are possible? what truncation symbols
  you can use? Is there a structured set of subject
  keywords or codes you can use (might be called
  thesaurus or index)?
• Be prepared to re-do your search several times to
  get it right - this will still be quicker than
  reading through hundreds of article titles!

11
Database features which can help your search

• Boolean Operators
• Truncation
• Wildcards
• Proximity Operators

12
Boolean Operators

• Remember that databases cant normally cope with
  full sentences or long phrases
• You may have to split up your topic into keywords
  or short phrases and link these together with
  so-called operators

13
Boolean Operators

• AND - results contain both terms - AND will help
  you narrow a search, e.g. recruitment and
  interviews
• OR - results contain either term - OR will help
  you broaden a search, e.g. recruitment or
  recruiting
• NOT - results contain 1st term but not 2nd - NOT
  will help you exclude unwanted material, e.g.
  recruitment not interviews

14
Boolean Operators

• Vary in strength different results for
• Recruitment AND interview OR assessment centres
• Recruitment AND (interview OR assessment centres)

15
Truncation

• Truncation symbols -often or
• Save you time typing variants
• econom find economy, economies, economic,
  economics, economical(ly)
• Be careful where you truncate! - car will find
  care, carbon and carbuncle as well as cars

16
Wildcards and Proximity Operators

• Not in all databases - consult help guide
• Wildcards e.g. organi?ation
• Proximity operators e.g. market n3 share , market
  w3 share

17
Literature Searching - database types

• Index
• Index with Abstract
• Full Text
• Remember the University pays for the databases
  and in general, the material you find with them
  is not retrievable using a search engine

18
Indexes

• What you get bibliographic citation author,
  title, journal name, date, volume number, part
  number, pagination
• Drawback - no quality control - you can only
  search in the words in the citation
• you may have to re-do your search many times over
  using variants of words and alternatives of terms
  
• Example ZETOC

19
Abstracts

• What you get bibliographic citation plus short
  summary of article
• Longer description of article content means you
  are more likely to get results
• added help in the form of controlled vocabulary
  keywords or descriptors
• Effects of indexing policy/accuracy
• Example Recent Advances in Manufacturing or
  EconLit (which also has some external links to
  full text)

20
Full text

• What you get bibliographic citation plus -
  usually - article full text (and often abstract
  too) Often have controlled keywords
• Radically different results for different
  searches- title, keywords and abstract - keywords
  only - all including full text
• Searching in full text - dangers of peripheral
  material
• Examples - Business Source Premier, Emerald
  Fulltext, Science Direct

21
Using Search Engines

• You can pick up a guided workbook and/or
  helpsheets in the Library
• Remember - engines like Google allow you to
  search for particular types of sites or pages
  which can increase relevance
• e.g. stakeholder pensions site.gov.uk OR
  polluter pays site.edu filetypepdf

22
Evaluate those websites!

• Who wrote the material?
• Who publishes the material? Authoritative?
• Accurate? Objective v biased
• Up-to-date? (site last updated)

23
Final tips...

• Allow plenty of time
• Inter-library loans time 7-14 days plus time to
  get a counter-signature. Time to read books
• Be systematic and try not to get bored (copy
  references carefully with page numbers now you
  may not be able to find them again later)
• Reference properly (Harvard APA and consult
  your dissertation/ISP guidelines)
• Keep copies of anything valuable - computer
  back-ups