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ECS Database Resources for INFO 2009 October 2011 Fiona Nichols

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What information? High quality Up to date Relevant

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Three important questions... What information do you need? Where should you look for it? How can you get hold of it?

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Where do you look for information? Google only Google & Wikipedia WebCat Library Website & WebCat Specialist databases, Library Website & WebCat

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Where should you look for information? Brigham Young Uni library's videos http://www.youtube.com/user/hbllproducti on#p/u/5/2ArIj236UHs http://www.youtube.com/user/hbllproducti on#p/u/5/2ArIj236UHs

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Direct URL http://www.soton.ac.uk/library http://www.soton.ac.uk/library Or via SUSSED Library Website

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try the Library Website! Go to either Subject Support or Resources

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Focus on High quality subject specialist information sources Techniques for searching Other electronic resources Exporting citations and referencing Tutorials

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Quality Sources Specialist databases and Indexes Full text sources Learned societies websites Gateways Journal providers

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Specialist Databases and Indexes up to date information from peer reviewed publications such as journal articles, conference proceedings, reports, books and theses well indexed enabling detailed searching contain abstracts of the articles retrieved may to link to full text where available

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but they dont cover everything. So Dont forget to check and see what other resources are available from the subject support pages

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Why would you use these databases? Because Google didnt work Need a comprehensive survey of all the literature that has been published worldwide Need to be able to access the full text/actual articles to find out about new research the minute is has been published Want to use resources available by just one publisher

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How to access them From the library home page at: www.soton.ac.uk/library ECS subject pages Resources page Using Institutional login or VPN when off campus

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Library Website and then, choose Physical and Applied Sciences, followed by Electronics and Computer Science Select the Subject Support Tab...

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Then select the relevant links

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Specialist databases & Indexes Web of Knowledge INSPEC Compendex High quality, academic world-wide coverage

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Key databases ISI Web of Science General science database Citation searching INSPEC Compendex Specialist Computing. Scientific and Engineering Databases

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Web of Knowledge Wide coverage of scientific sources Databases can be searched individually or together Main databases of relevance to ECS Inspec (controlled vocabulary) Web of Science (citation searching) ISI Proceedings

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Use Select a database tab for full details of the databases available on the Web of Knowledge Platform

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Compendex Mainly engineering and physical sciences Searchable using a controlled vocabulary (Thesaurus) But does NOT give the full text!

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Online help and tutorials Remember tutorials to many of the librarys resources and services can be found at :- http://www.soton.ac.uk/library/infoskills /tutorials.html http://www.soton.ac.uk/library/infoskills /tutorials.html

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Copyright it does matter!

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Access Institutional Login iSolutions username/password VPN check iSolutions site for details

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How do we use them?

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Search techniques http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasclaveirole/454394799/

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Devise a search strategy Look at your own search statement or project topic and devise a search strategy by selecting relevant keywords or concepts Break down topic into components Identify keywords, synonyms, alternative spellings & related terms List relevant headings Then put the search strategy into practice in the different databases and compare the results

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Anatomy of a literature search Identify resources that cover your study topic Create a search strategy Conduct a search using search operators (i.e. AND, OR and NOT) Check results for relevance Changes to search strategy needed? From library resources, obtain the items to read

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How to search the databases Topic search keywords or phrases Author/title search By journal/conference title Etc etc

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Search smarter, search faster http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa66Ax TbjxA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa66Ax TbjxA

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Demonstrate a search Using the Keyword Author

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Searching techniques (1) Search statements retrieve exact matches Use Boolean operators (and,or,not) to combine search terms

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Searching Boolean logic AND, OR, NOT Symbols vary e.g. optic* Enclose in quotes black body radiation Truncation and wildcards Phrase searching

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Searching techniques (2) Use truncation, stemming and wild cards (symbols vary between databases) Phrase searching Think carefully about what terms to use and how to enter them

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Truncation Finds words with a common stem (normally * symbol, $ in WebCat / Medline) comput* will find: computer computers computing computational

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Wildcards Replace a single character (normally ? symbol) Wom?n will find both woman and women Engine? will find both engine and engines but not engineering Colo?r will find both colour and color

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Phrase Searching Some databases search for a phrase if Boolean operators are not present Others require phrases to be enclosed in quotation marks Note that truncation and stemming do not always work with phrase searching

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Truncation Question here

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Examples of combining search terms and using truncations

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Same search, different database

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So... Decide on the exact form of the terms you will use Allow for any relevant variations in terminology and spelling Use truncation and wildcard symbols where appropriate

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Finding the documents Direct links from databases TDNet electronic (and print) journal holdings links from Library web page and from most databases WebCat print and electronic holdings of books, journals, conferences reports and theses

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Exceptions Items not individually catalogued Patents/ BSI/IEC standards IET/IEEE conferences and standards (IEEEXplore) Items not in UoS Libraries Inter Library Loan (ILL) Free material e.g. NASA Technical Reports

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Describe and/or demo

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Web of Knowledge hosts a number of databases: Web of Science Medline INSPEC Journal Citation Reports

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Use Select a database tab for full details of the databases available on the Web of Knowledge Platform

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Web of Science Good for citation searching Has a useful citation linking feature

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Web of Science has a useful citation linking feature Click here to see all citing articles

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These articles all cite the parent article TD-Net link

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Following the full text link through TDNet

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If there is no (online) full text follow the Catalog link if present or check WebCat directly

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Access via Library web site:

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Advanced searching techniques Citation searching Controlled vocabulary (thesaurus) Limiting Saving searches Current awareness/alerts

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Controlled (Thesaurus) terms Terms added to a record taken from a fixed list (thesaurus) Searching these makes results more relevant by avoiding concepts mentioned in passing retrieving material containing alternative terms

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Saved Searches Search history Saving searches Alerts

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Select Search History to save a search or create an alert

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To save searches and create alerts set up an account

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Full Text Resources

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Key Full text Resources IEEEXplore ACM Digital Library LNCS lecture Notes in computer science Individual items not linked from TDNet

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Full text key resources - Select any of these full text resources

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Scroll down for more...

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66 Finding information on the web http://www.flickr.com/photos/danardvincente/2512148775/http://www.flickr.com/photos/danardvincente/2512148775/

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Internet Searching There are some good search engines Google Scholar and many high quality websites and gateways Intute but many websites have no quality controls and need careful evaluation so one of the best internet resources for you is

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Internet search engines There are some good search engines Google Scholar (general academic) Scirus (scientific information) OAIster ArXiv But remember that you still need to evaluate what you find

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Specialist search engines High quality websites Full text sources Scirus Google Scholar OAIster ArXiv

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these services can also be accessed from the subject pages

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E-print servers The information is free and usually full text They contain the very latest research and ideas There is no delay in publication Institutional repositories may contain data and other information too

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But Many have not been peer reviewed They may contain inaccurate or poor quality material As long as you are aware of the potential drawbacks they are a valuable resource

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Recording your results Mark relevant references in your search results Then E-mail results to yourself Export to reference software Save to a file

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Recording references for your bibliography Record the full details of the reference Record how you found it

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When I finish a search what happens to it? Delete it Lose it Save it if wish Export it if wish

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Further Help Enquiry points in the library Fiona Nichols - f.nichols@soton.ac.ukf.nichols@soton.ac.uk - libenqs@soton.ac.uklibenqs@soton.ac.uk The library website www.southampton.ac.uk/library www.southampton.ac.uk/library

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Did you feel that using the zappers has helped your learning experience? Yes No Why??????