finding information for research: beyond google! nigel morgan & jane sparks november 24 th 2009

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Finding Information for Research:

Beyond Google!

Nigel Morgan & Jane Sparks

November 24th 2009

Session outcomesAt the end of the session you should be able to:

Identify useful information resources for your subject

Analyse your topic to produce keywords Techniques for effective searching Use a range of scholarly information

sources to find journal articles and book chapters on your subject

Use advanced database features including alerts and citation trails

Which service do you use most often to find information?

Specialist search tools for scientists

RefSeek – http://www.refseek.com/

8 useful science search engines:- Scirus www.scirus.com/- Science.gov www.science.gov- ScienceResearch.com www.scienceresearch.com

/- Scitation scitation.aip.org/- WorldWideScience.org worldwidescience.org/- Science Accelerator scienceaccelerator.gov/- TechXtra www.techxtra.ac.uk

Planning your search

Identify the key concepts in your topic

Which words describe these concepts? Identify synonyms Identify alternative spellings

Try different combinations of keywords

Consider synonyms / related terms

Environmental impact of global

warming on the UK climate

EnvironmentalEnvironment

+impactseffects

solutions

global warmingclimate changeglobal change climatic changegreenhouse effect thermal stressatmospheric composition

UKUnited Kingdom

Great Britain+ +

Environmental impact of global warming on UK

climate

SOLUTIONS

waste reduction

Kyoto protocol

energy saving

CONSEQUENCES

carbon trading

observation

empirical data

EVIDENCE

CAUSES

fossil fuelsspecies extinction

health threatsfood scarcity

coastal erosion

increased land usegreenhouse

gases

Exercise 1:

Planning your Search

Accessing resources

Links to Voyager / ELSLinks to databasesOff campus links

Improving your searches: some basic tricks!

AND Global warming AND floods

OR Global warming OR climate change (Global warming OR climate change)

AND floodsFlood* = flood, floods, flooding,

floodedglobali?ation = globalisation,

globalization

Think of all permutations!

Tumor or TumourAlzheimer or Alzheimer’s Hospitalisation or hospitalizationCephalonia or KefaloniaCreutzfeldt-Jacob Disease or CJD

Can you think of any other examples?

Are you aware of Scopus?

Nearly 30 million records 250 million quality web

sources Broad coverage of sciences Almost 20,000 journals Abstracts go back to 1966 Available via MWE Useful alerts feature

Exercises 2 & 3

MWE and Scopus

Research tip: citation searching

Q: What is citation searching?

A: Looking forward in time to discover articles which have cited a particular work

Schreider S.Y. et al. 2000 Climate change impacts on urban flooding.

Climatic Change 47 (1-2) pp. 91-115.

Alerts

Information is tailored to your needs.Information is sent directly to your

mailbox, or RSS feed reader wherever you are in the world

Delays in receiving information about the latest publications are minimised.

You don’t have to re-run the same old searches every week.

Exercise 4:

Multi-disciplinary databases- advanced

features(Citation trails & Alerts)

Subject Specific Services

BIOSIS PreviewsPubMed

ScienceDirectEmbase

All accessible via MWE

Finding the full text

Schreider, S.Y. et al. 2000 Climate change impacts on urban flooding. Climatic Change 47 (1-2) pp. 91-115.

If you are not given a link via a database check:

Voyager Electronic Journals portal

Exercises 5 & 6: Subject specific

databases and finding the full text

Exercise 7:

Other sources of scholarly information

Interlibrary Loans

Journals & Conferences Pink form

Books, Theses, Reports Blue form

Authorisation: Lecturer’s signature

£6.90 per photocopy / £10.20 per loan

Copyright declaration: Your signature

Keeping up-to-date

Latest journal articles on your topic

The table of contents of your favourite journal before the printed version arrives

Exercise 8:

Zetoc alerts

RSS feeds

RSS feeds Regular updates of new content added

to web sites Alternative to email alerts now offered

by many academic-related sites including publishers and databases

Need an RSS feed reader – available within the MWE portal

Mailing lists & blogsMailing lists

Submit messages to list members Receive messages posted to list Search the archives of previous messages

Use: www.jiscmail.ac.ukBlogs

Postings to a web-site in chronological order

Vary in quality, but some can be useful Good blogs updated regularly

Find blogs via http://blogsearch.google.com

And finally…

Can you tell us what you have found most useful during the

session?

Further Help

Nigel MorganMorganNJ@Cardiff.ac.uk

Jane SparksSparksJ@Cardiff.ac.uk

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