A presentation designed to help students improve their search skills

1. Improving Your Search Skills
Sue Godsell

2. Today’s session
1.Literature searching
2.Analyse your research question(s)
3.Identify your search terms
4.Use the right tools
5.Search techniques
6.Evaluate your search strategy
7.Obtain material not held at BBK
8.Manage your references

3. Literature Searching
A literature search is a systematic and
thorough review of the published literature:
To provide context for your research question
To establish that no-one else has already undertaken your
piece of research
To find existing relevant research
To identify trends and developments and areas of dispute
To identify where your research fits into the existing body of
literature

4. Step 2
1.Literature searching
2.Analyse your research question(s)
3.Identify search terms
4.Use the right tools
5.Search techniques
6.Evaluate your search strategy
7.Obtain material not held at BBK
8.Manage your references

5. Analyse your research
question
Differs depending on subject area but
consider:
 Who are the main proponents?
 What are the main principles?
 Were there any significant events?
 What were the precursors and subsequent
developments?
 Are there opposing or counter theories?

6. Analyse your research
question
 Mind mapping software like MindView can
help to set out the relationships between
concepts
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lib/disability-support/software/software/mind-mapping
 There are also many free ones out there
 A nice guide from Georgia Tech
 http://libguides.gatech.edu/content.php?pid=144183&sid=1241860

7. Example of a mind map for a literature searchExample of a mind map for a literature
search

8. Step 3
1.Literature searching
2.Analyse your research question(s)
3.Identify your search terms
4.Use the right tools
5.Search techniques
6.Evaluate your search strategy
7.Obtain material not held at BBK
8.Manage your references

9. Identify your search terms
List your key words/phrases and then consider…
Variant spellings
• American English e.g. behaviour/behavior,
organisation/organization
• Plurals e.g. child/children
• Prefixes and hyphens e.g. self-esteem
Alternative terms
 e.g. climate change/global warming/greenhouse effect, etc
 Scientific names/common names
Wider / narrower concepts
 e.g. cancer – blood cancer – lymphoblastic leukaemia
 You may be able to use a thesaurus e.g. PsycInfo, MeSH

10. Create a search query
 Once you’ve identified your terms, put them
together in a search query.
 A search analysis
grid can help
 e.g.
A search on
“Uptake of metals
by plants”
1st concept 2nd concept 3rd concept
metal
and
uptake
and Plant/plants/
species name
or or or
metals
accumulation
vegetation
or or or
metallic
accumulative
vegetative

11. Step 4
1.Literature searching
2.Analyse your research question(s)
3.Identify your search terms
4.Use the right tools
5.Search techniques
6.Evaluate your search strategy
7.Obtain material not held at BBK
8.Manage your references

12. Use the right tools
The Library subscribes to 50+databases to help you identify
what has been published in your field – don’t just use Google
Scholar! Here’s a few reasons why:
The databases are curated by humans, GS is machine indexed
The databases select journals to index on their reputation in their
field
Articles are mostly peer-reviewed (read and approved by other
academics) before publication
The search interfaces are more advanced and help you get
targeted results
The pdfs you find on Google Scholar may not be the final
published versions.

13. Use the right tools
 Which ones are best for your research? See
the subject guide(s) or ask your subject
librarian
 Check the scope and coverage
 Become familiar with the interface(s)
 Same search principles and techniques
apply to different interfaces

14. Step 5
1.Literature searching
2.Analyse your research question(s)
3.Identify your search terms
4.Use the right tools
5.Search techniques
6.Evaluate your search strategy
7.Obtain material not held at BBK
8.Manage your references

15. Search techniques
 Phrase searching: put exact phrases in
quotation marks e.g. “quantitative easing”
 Truncation or stemming: asterisk after
the word stem e.g. geneti*
 Wildcards: used for variant spellings e.g.
organi?ation, labo$r

16. Search techniques
 Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT
 Brackets: e.g. (cold* or flu or influenza)
and (“vitamin c” or “ascorbic acid”)
 Proximity searching: specify how close
keywords are to each other, e.g. business*
n2 ethic*, global* same warm*

17. Boolean Logic
AND
Architecture
OR
NOT
Los
Angeles
Vitamin
C
Ascorbic
Acid
Java Indonesia

18. Search techniques
“Pearl growing” - a way of expanding your search
if you have found/been told about one or more
important paper(s) in your field
Use the words and phrases found in the
title/abstract/keywords and search on these
Search for more articles by the same author
Use any “related records” feature that the database has
Look at the “Cited References” - the bibliography of that
paper
Look at the “Times Cited” – papers that have been published
more recently that have cited the paper.

19. Citation Searching
 Use the Citation Indexes (Web of Science)
 Useful once you have identified one or more
important papers in your field
 Allows you to find papers that have cited a
paper you know about
 Good way of searching forward in time

20. 1.Literature searching
2.Analyse your research question(s)
3.Identify your search terms
4.Use the right tools
5.Search techniques
6.Evaluate your search strategy
7.Obtain material not held at BBK
8.Manage your references

21. Evaluating your search strategy
 Too many results/irrelevant results?
 Try limiting by date
 Try using NOT e.g. Java NOT Indonesia
 Look at irrelevant results and try to work out why you are getting
them
 Look at relevant results and pick out better search terms
 Too few results?
 Check your spelling
 Try alternative terms/spellings
 Don’t forget truncation and wildcards
 Reduce the number of concepts
 Try the “pearl growing” technique

22. 1.Literature searching
2.Analyse your research question(s)
3.Identify your search terms
4.Use the right tools
5.Search techniques
Hands on - Try out the search techniques
6.Evaluate your search strategy
7.Obtain material not held at BBK
8.Manage your references

23. Obtain material not held at BBK
You will inevitably come across material that we don’t hold here at
Birkbeck. You can:
1. Use other libraries. Find out which other libraries
you can use:
University of London libraries
Senate House Library
British Library
SCONUL Access Scheme allows all research students/part-
time ug and pg to borrow from 170+ libraries
Check the subject guides/ask at the help desk
2. Use the interlibrary loan service
£1 per request – some depts pay for PhD students

24. 1.Literature searching
2.Analyse your research question(s)
3.Identify your search terms
4.Use the right tools
5.Search techniques
6.Evaluate your search strategy
7.Obtain material not held at BBK
8.Manage your references

25. Manage your references
Use a bibliographic management package
such as EndNote, Mendeley or Zotero
These will help you store and search the
references you have collected
They also work with Word and other
packages to automatically cite your
references when you are writing