advanced literature search skills for agriculture, engineering and the sciences
TRANSCRIPT
Advanced Search SkillsFinding Literature for ALES, Engineering & Sciences
Diane Clark, AFNS [email protected] of Alberta Libraries
Outline
• controlled vocabulary• natural language / keywords & phrases• Boolean operators• proximity locators• highly cited papers
2
Why?
=horse chestnut
playing conkers
chestnut flower
conker moth
Under the Chestnut tree
Horse chestnut supplement
Chestnut horse
• Databases control how your search terms are performed
• There is no interpretation of your information need(s)
• Work with the database syntax and structure
Order of Precedence:No Boolean Operators
ANDOR
E.g.stress and fracturefracturestress fieldsstress fracture gapstress analysisfracture surgery
ANDOR AND NOT
E.g.diabetes childhood and diabetestype 2 diabeteschildhood diabetesdiabetes in children childhood diabetes mellitus
Exact match from left to right
E.g.childhood diabetes
Controlled Vocabulary•Metadata• LCSH (Library of Congress
Subject Headings)•MeSH (Medical Subject
Headings) • Index terms• Thesauri
Sub-headings & number of citations
Tree or hierarchy in MedLine
Scope Note = More info
Scope Note – information about subject headings
CABI in Web of Science use CABICODES for controlled vocabulary
When to use
Controlled Vocabulary• Established concepts• Display relationships between
concepts
Keywords• Newer concepts• Interdisciplinary topics• New articles (not indexed)
usually called “In process”• Errors in spelling or indexing
Boolean Operators
Operators• AND• OR• NOT
When ordering food AND gets you more
Boolean Operators
Operators• AND• OR• NOT
When looking for articles in a database, AND = less results
X
Boolean Operators
Operators• AND• OR• NOT
When ordering food OR gives you less
OR
Boolean Operators
Operators• AND• OR• NOT
When looking for articles in a database, OR = more results
Boolean Operators
Operators• AND• OR• NOT
When ordering food or searching for citations, NOT = removes unwanted items
Lettuce, tomato but NOT turkey
Combining Boolean Operators
• AND = less• OR = more• NOT = remove
Combining operators 1. small AND poor grammar AND
green = Yoda2. small OR green = Kermit, Hulk, Yoda, Gary
Coleman3. green AND poor grammar = Kermit, Hulk,
Yoda
Order of Precedence:With Boolean Operators
NEAR/#SAMENOT AND OR
ORW/#ANDAND NOT
Exact match from left to right
Note: Precedence can be controlled using nesting or brackets
calcifediol OR 25 hydroxy vitamin D OR 25(OH)D OR 25-hydroxyvitamin D
child OR children OR teen OR adolescent OR juvenile OR minor OR school aged OR teenager = ?
= results are citations with any of the terms above, with the only term that is narrowed is 25-hydroxyvitamin D with child
Order of Precedence: Without Nesting Boolean Operators
Looking for citations on vitamin D levels in children:
AND
(calcifediol OR 25 hydroxy vitamin D
OR 25(OH)D OR 25-hydroxyvitamin D)
(child OR children OR teen OR adolescent OR
juvenile OR minor OR school aged OR teenager) = results vitamin D levels in a specific population
Order of Precedence: Using Nesting Boolean Operators
Use brackets ( ) to determine order Searched 1st
Searched 2nd
ANDSets are combined last
Phrases & Adjacency
Phrase for an Exact Match• MedLine
“horse chestnut”• Scopus
{horse chestnut}• Web of Science
“horse chestnut”
Adjacency/Proximity • Medline
horse chestnut ADJ5 vitamin• Scopus
horse-chestnut W/5 vitamin• Web of Science
horse chestnut NEAR/5 vitamin
Highly Cited Articles Web of Science
Looking for prion disease in chickens Change “Sort by” to
A highly cited paper is a paper that belongs to the top 1% of papers in a research field published in a specified year. The 1% is determined by the highly cited threshold calculated for the research field in the specified year.
Highly Cited Articles Web of Science
Note: There aren’t “highly cited” papers in all topics
Summary
1. Become a registered user of the databases to save searches and get alerts
2. Search more than one database and vary your terms and strategies
3. Finding highly cited authors and papers can be a challenge
4. Ask your librarian to help get you started
Questions? Ask Your Librarian• AFNS
[email protected]• Biology & RenRes
[email protected] • Chemistry
[email protected]• Chem Eng, Mat Eng, REES
[email protected]• Civil Eng
• Computer Eng [email protected]
• EAS [email protected]
• Human [email protected]
• Math [email protected]