Technical Informatio

n Resources

EUROPEAN PROJECT SEMESTER 2012

Scientific research is a process that, by the application of scientific method, seeks relevant and reliable information to understand, verify, correct or applying knowledge.

RESEARCH PROCESS

Planning is essential to writing a good research assignment

INFORMATION LITERACY

Obtaining the methodology to drawing up a scientific work

Facing the student up to a higher work than normally found in laboratories and practices throughout their studies

It is essential to obtain the engineer’s degree

Project aims…

RESEARCH PROCESS

The research work must…

Being planned

Treat on a particular topic

Provide news

Be objective

Provide data to permit verification or

refutation of which is explained

Be helpful to others

RESEARCH PROCESS

OPEN LEARNING TOOLS

Additional information to improve

your research

skills

http://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/english-communication-for-scientists-14053993/contents

Tutorials about Information literacy and research assignment

Decipher your research assignment  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWFoRVoHvrU

Information literacy  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I2m_tXqBnc Discover information iiteracy  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWzigkpR7yg&feature=related

Handbooks Monographs Dictionaries Encyclopaedias Scholarly or academic

journals Technical magazines Conference proceedings Conference papers

E-prints Research reports Technical standards Patents Degree projects and

dissertations Doctoral theses Industrial catalogues Maps and plans

… On paper or electronic version!

DOCUMENT TYPES

INFORMATION SEARCH TOOLS

Library catalogues

Bibliographic databases

Search engines

Thematic guides

Deep web

Web portals

Lecturers and experts

A search strategy is what we call the query that is put to an information retrieval tool to obtain results. In order to perform queries, you will need to be familiar with search terms and how to combine them.

SEARCH STRATEGIES

1. Formulating information need Express the topic or subject in a concrete sentence

STEPS TO FOLLOW

Example: Physiotherapy on elder people with femur fracture

2. Identifying keywords Identify the most important concepts

Example:Concept 1: PhysiotherapyConcept 2: EldersConcept 3: fractureConcept 4: femur

3. Choosing terms Select the terms to fine-tune you search query (key

words) and pull apart of stop words. Search for synonyms

Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 4

Physiotherapy

Elderly Femur Fracture

Manual therapy

Older Femoral bone

Luxation

Therapeutic massage

Aged Dislocation

Ancient

STEPS TO FOLLOW

A

A

B

B

B

AND(I)

Returns items that contain both terms

It will find all items talking about femur fracture. Is used to limit the number

of results and to obtain those that actually meet your information needs.

OR(O)

Retrieves documents that contain any of the terms

It will find all items talking about different kinds of fractures and moreover all items about any aspect concerning

femur. Is used to increase the number of results. It is useful for searching for synonyms or terms in other languages.

NOT(NO)

Exclude any results that contain the terms following the NOT operator

It will find all items about fractures except those talking about femur

fractures. Is used to limit the number of search results and narrow them down

to those actually needed.

A

4. Matching terms 4.1 Boolean operators Make it possible to combine search terms to fine-tune

a search and retrieve exactly what we are looking for.

A = Fracture / B = Femur

STEPS TO FOLLOW

4. Matching terms 4.1 Boolean operators

This way we can combine synonyms with OR and different terms with AND

Term 1 Term 2

Term 3 Term 4

Physiotherapy

Elderly Femur Fracture

Manual therapy

Older Femoral bone

Luxation

Therapeutic massage

Aged Dislocation

Ancient

AND

OR

And the query comes like: (Physiotherapy OR manual therapy OR therapeutic massage)

AND (elder OR ancient OR old OR aged) AND (femur OR femoral bone)AND (fracture OR luxation OR dislocation)

STEPS TO FOLLOW

4. Matching terms 4.2 Proximity operators

These are sets of symbols that are used in databases to search for terms that are close to each other.

WITH Is used to search for terms in the same field

ADJ X Is used to search for terms that are separated by at least X number of words that the user specifies

NEAR Is used to search for terms that are in the same sentence or paragraph

“ ” Are used to search for exact terms in a particular order

STEPS TO FOLLOW

5. Amplifying the search query

Truncations: are used to retrieve words with the same root but different endings.

Wildcard: operators are used to replace one or more letters in a word

The symbol used varies in each database: *, $, ?, !, #

Example 1: therap* = therapy, therapies, therapeutic, therapeutics, therapist, etc.

Example 2: fem?r* = femur, femoral, etc.

STEPS TO FOLLOW

6. Redifining searchesAdvanced search options in databases make it possible to limit or expand results. Each database offers different options: features, fields, etc.

Some limits are: Geographic or cultural: ex. Only results in spanish

scope

Language: ex. Only results in english

By fields: ex. Search only by author field

By number of results: ex. shows first 10 results

By type of document: ex. Only journal articles

Full text: ex. Access to full texts only

STEPS TO FOLLOW

A good search is exhaustive and precise

If noise or silence occurs, the search should be

reformulated

7. Performing search and assessing search result

Exhaustiveness: When all of the data that has been published on the topic of interest is retrieved (when the search finds all the documents in the database that contain the term used in the search strategy with the specified conditions)

Precision: When all of the information that is retrieved is of use to the project in question

Noise: Is produced when non-relevant information is retrieved in the search

Silence: when we cannot retrieve the information that a database has on a specific topic

STEPS TO FOLLOW

We should to REFORMULATE

THE SEARCH QUERY

8. Reformulate the search query and start again…

If our results are poor…

If we’ve obtained too much noise or silence…

And anyway, we want to explore more the database…

STEPS TO FOLLOW

Strategic keywords for your project proposal:

“Improving airport security”

Looking for keywords?

Security systems

Airport passenger

transportation

Airport security

Explosives detection

Aircraft landing

guidance

Airport vehicular

traffic

Computer crime

Safety systems

Airport ground

equipment

Electric power system

protection

Fire detectors Terrorism

Safety devices

Strategic keywords for your project proposal:

“Interactive information point”

Looking for keywords?

Multi-touchInteractive terminals

Touch-screen

Interactive tourism point

Cultural advertising

User interface

Information access

Touch sensitive screens

Information source

Guidance software

Strategic keywords for your project proposal:

“Digital talking books: DAISY convertor”

Looking for keywords?

Handicapped persons

Audiobooks

Disabled people

Reading disability Print

disabilities

Blindness

Handicapped aids

Vision loss

Braille readers

Navigation aids Navigatio

n search

Impaired vision

Strategic keywords for your project proposal:

“Acoustic buoy mesh alarm system”

Looking for keywords?

Autonomous underwater

vehicles

MESH networkin

g

Oceanographic survey

Sound monitoring

RAP systems Acoustic

tracking

Underwater sounds

Buoy positioning

Subsurface

structure

Warning systems

GSMAUV’s

GPRS

Strategic keywords for your project proposal:

“Applications of aluminium foams in automotive industry, mainly in crash boxes”

Looking for keywords?

Aluminum alloy

Coated aluminium

foams

Nanonickel coatings

Carbon foams

Crash box

Metal foam

Al foam

Open cell structure

Alporas foams

Porous metals

Strategic keywords for your project proposal:

“Influences of pulse (deceleration) in a full frontal crash at 56km/h”

Looking for keywords?

Passenger cars

Occupant response

Passenger safety

Intelligent transportation systems

Seat belts

Crash injury

Car crash

Deceleration pulse

Occupant injuries

SRS

Biomechanical analysis

Crash-pulse

Air bags

NOW KEEP IN MIND THESE RESOURCES

Quick guide (in your hands)

UPC Catalog UPC Databases by Metalib

Thematic guides

Scirus andGoogle Scholar

Technical Information Resources

Thank you!

EUROPEAN PROJECT SEMESTER 2012