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AuthorAID Workshopon Research Writing

Ethiopia

November 2011

Effective Use of Electronic Information Resources

Accessible to Ethiopian Scientists

Teklemichael Wordofa

Addis Ababa University Libraries, Ethiopia

teferat@gmail.com

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What are E-resources?

• An electronic resource (e-resource) is an electronic information resource (bibliographic or full-text) that you can access through the Internet. It includes electronic journals, databases and electronic books, websites, subject gateways, etc.

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Advantages of E-resources

• Currency and timeliness of the information• Ability to do full text searching across a huge number

of resources in one go• Provision of time-saving features • Ability to download, print, or send the desired

document instantly• Convenience of accessing articles any time from your

computer• Ability to link directly to additional information

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Arrangement and Licensing

• INASP and the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERII) - Supports research sector capacity building by

strengthening the production, access and dissemination of information and knowledge

• Country coordinators, research community and INASP identify resource requirements

• INASP negotiates access to resources• Cost of resources is related to the GDP of the

country (98% discounts!)

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Access Model

• The resources are available on a country-wide licence basis for:– Academic & Research Institutions– Other non-profit Organizations

• Institution within the country needs to register itself– CC assist the process

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Major Resources List - 1• African Journals OnLine (AJOL) : TOCs, abstracts & fulltext from over

400 African journals• American Chemical Society(ACS) : provides over 35 high quality, high

impact journals in the chemical and related sciences.• American Institute of Physics (AIP) : AIP publishes over 15 journals,

magazines and conference proceedings series. • American Physical Society (APS) : provide access to the Physical

Review Online Archive (PROLA) and journals produced by APS.• American Society of Civil Engineers : ASCE Journals Online provides

unprecedented access to 32 journals. • British Library Document Supply Centre : Online document delivery

from over 20,000 journals and other documents• Cambridge University Press : provides over 230 leading titles in

Linguistics, Politics, Medicine, Science, Technology, Social Science and Humanities.

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Major Resources List - 2• EBSCO Host Research Databases : Over 11,000 full text, peer-

reviewed journals and over 15,000 abstracted and indexed titles. • Emerald Group Publishing Ltd : Emerald features over 150 Business

a, Management Engineering journals. • IOP Publishing : IOPscience provides over 60 of the world's most

prestigious journals in physics and related sciences.• JSTOR : is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the

scholarly community discover, use, and build upon a wide range of intellectual content in a trusted digital archive.

• Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. : Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. delivers electronic access to peer-reviewed journals in areas of biotechnology, biomedical research/life sciences, clinical medicine and surgery, and law.

• Publishing Group (NPG) : publishes journals and online databases across the life, physical and applied sciences and, most recently, clinical medicine

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Major Resources List - 3• OECD : is the world's largest think-tank, renowned for its authoritative,

internationally comparable statistics, analysis, and outlooks in Economics, Public Policy, Social Sciences and Environmental issues.

• Oxford Journals (OUP) : Oxford Journals provides over 200 journals from science, technical, professional, medical, humanities, arts and social science disciplines.

• Project MUSE : Project MUSE provides online access to almost 500 full-text journals from 140 non-profit publishers in the humanities and social sciences.

• Taylor & Francis Online Journals : More than 1,300 titles in humanities, social sciences and applied sciences.

• University of Chicago Press : UCP provides access to nearly 50 scholarly journals in the fields of social sciences, humanities, education, and biological and physical sciences.

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Major Resources List - 4• Wiley Online Library : Wiley, a leading international resource for

scientific, technical, medical and scholarly content providing access to over 1000 leading journals.

• World Bank E-Library - provides access to the following databases:– World Development Indicators (WDI) Online Database– World Bank – Global Economic Monitor– World Bank Global Development Finance (GDF) Database– World Bank: Africa Development Indicators

• AAU ETD : http://etd.aau.edu.et/Dspace

Full List of the resources is available at:http://www.inasp.info/peri/resources.htmlwww.aau.edu.et/index.php/library-e-resources

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Characteristics of the E-Resources

• Posses basic common functionality– Searchable, browseable– Simple/Advanced search features– Provision of information updates:

• Alerts (TOC, Keyword) by email• Personal work spaces

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Characteristics (continued)

• Different user interfaces– worth spending some time with system

familiarisation prior to information seeking• Requires Effective Search Strategy and

Technique as Key to effective Use of the Resources

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Effective Search Strategy Planning

• Define your information need• Decide which sources to use• Find out how they function• Run your search• Review and refine your search

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Define Your Information Need

• What sort of information are you looking for?– Specific information, e.g. a fact or date

• Reference source, e.g. data book, encyclopaedia, dictionary, the Web or even a textbook are usually best.

– General information, e.g. research areas• May require more thought, including how much

information is needed and at what depth

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Define Your Information Need (continued)

Careful choice of search term(s) is vital • What key words do you think will appear on the

site/article you want?• What key concepts is it a part of or related to?• Are there any synonyms for these keywords or

concepts?• Are there any alternative spellings for your

keywords/concepts • Are plurals or capitalisation involved?

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Define Your Information Need cont…

Example: I want to find information about the health implications of water pollution Keywords–’water’ ‘pollution’ ‘health’Concepts–‘environmental degradation’ or ‘agricultural

management’ or ‘health’Synonyms

• rivers, lakes, sea, coastal, ‘domestic water’, etc• ‘oil spills’, chemical, biological, etc

Alternative spellings: nonePlurals: river(s), lake(s), disease(s)Capitals: maybe the name of a specific lake, disease, region

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Decide Which Sources to Use

What sources are appropriate for your information need?

• Individuals’ and organisations’ home pages• Newspapers and magazines• Subject gateways, databases, catalogues• Journals— abstracts or full text • Reference resources, e.g., encyclopaedias, dictionaries• Books• Grey literature, e.g. government publications• Print or electronic

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Search Functions

Electronic search tools may interpret your search terms using

• Boolean operators• Phrase and proximity searching• Truncation or wildcard functions• Case sensitivity• Fields• Stop words• Relevance sorting

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Boolean Searching

• Uses commands (operators) such as: AND, OR, NOT

• Different search tools may use different symbolsAND +NOT –

• Different search tools may use OR or AND as a default setting

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Nuclear Radiation

Query: I would like information on Nuclear or Radiation

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Nuclear Radiation

Query: I'm interested in the relationship between Nuclear

and Radiation

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Radiation Nuclear

Query: I want information on Radiation, but I want to avoid seeing anything on Radiation

caused due to Nuclear substances

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Phrase and Proximity Searching

• Using quotation marks allows you to search for an exact phrase, e.g. “Nuclear Medicine”

• Using NEAR allows you to specify how close to each other the terms you are searching for should be

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Truncation or Wildcard Searches• Truncation: place a symbol at the end of the

word so you search for variant endings of that word– E.g. Pollut$ would look for Pollutant, Pollution,

Polluting

• Wildcards: place a symbol within a word to find variations on it– E.g. analy*e would find analyse or analyze

• Different symbols— including $ * # ! : —are used by different search tools

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Other variations in search tools

• Case sensitivity: use of upper or lower case in search terms

• Fields: searches in fields such as the title, URL or links

• Stop words: searches may ignore common words such as ‘and’, ‘if’, ‘an’, ‘the’

• Relevance sorting: relevance is measured in different ways in different search tools

• Brackets may be used to order the search, e.g. (Nuclear AND Application) NOT (Energy OR Power)

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Run the search

• Take the terms/keywords you have decided on

• Find the sources you are going to search• Read the ‘Help’ page to find out how that

particular source uses Boolean commands, wildcards, etc

• Run the search

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Review and Revise Your Search• Review and revise your search scope and

strategy in light of the results obtained– Too many results– Too few results– Too basic/Advanced– Not in a language you understand

• Try new sources of information• Evaluate the information to ensure it is

relevant, accurate, of high enough quality, etc• Ensure you keep a complete record of the

source of the information for citing later

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Thank you