phd session
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PhD Session. Kate Purcell, Subject Librarian [email protected] Tel: 020 7631 6062. Literature Searching. A systematic and thorough review of published literature in all formats To establish that no-one else has already undertaken your piece of research To find existing relevant research - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Literature Searching
A systematic and thorough review of
published literature in all formats
To establish that no-one else has already
undertaken your piece of research
To find existing relevant research
To establish general patterns and areas of
dispute
Literature Searching
Key stages
Determine and analyse concepts in your
proposal
Identify search terms
Identify relevant bibliographic tools
Consider search strategies
Analyse your research area
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?
Identify search terms
List key words and then consider….
Variant spellings
American English e.g.‘our’ vs. ‘or’
Plurals
Prefixes and hyphens Alternative terms Related terms – wider / narrower concepts
Bibliographic tools
Databases that help you identify what has
been published in your subject
Which is best for your subject?
Check the scope and coverage
Become familiar with the interface
Same search principles apply to different
interfaces
Search principles
Phrase searching: exact phrases in
quotation marks
Truncation: asterisk after the word stem
Wildcards: for variant spellings
Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT
Proximity searching: specify how close
keywords are to each other
Search principles
Wildcards A question mark stands for any letter
E.g. organi?ation will find ‘organisation’ and ‘organization’
A dollar sign stands for any or no letterE.g. labo$r will find ‘labour’ and ‘labor’
Citation Indexes
Extensive subject coverage Academic peer-reviewed titles Lists who has cited an article Useful for tracing research and
development of theories Identify key authors / journals in
a field Identify trends in research
Citation Indexes
Register for additional features
Save your search histories
Set up weekly or monthly email alerts
with new results of your saved search
Set up citation alerts