Transcript Searching the Literature Lecture

Search strategies – how to cover all the bases
Erika Gavillet
Walton Library
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Define your topic
 Be clear on what you are asking
 Keep the question as simple but as specific
as possible
 Analyse the elements of your question
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main subjects or concepts
population group - sex, age range
publication language
publication date
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Sample question
What has been published in English since
1999 on the relationship between heavy
drinking and adolescent behaviour?
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Analyse the question…
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subject 1
subject 2
population group
publication type
publication language
publication date
heavy alcohol drinking
adolescent behaviour
(adolescents)
journal articles
English
1999-2014
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Your main concepts
 Make a list of all your main search terms
 Check for alternate terms and synonyms
 Use thesauri and dictionaries,
 Use controlled vocabularies (MeSH headings)
Most indexes and cataloguers with use MeSH
MeSH is NOT just medical terminology
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Population group
 Age
 Sex
 Race
 Socio-economic grouping
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Dates
- How far back do you need to go?
- Earliest electronic resources are in the 40’s
but most go back to 80’s
- Might need to consult printed indexes
- Recent work? Use review articles, Cochrane,
Web of Science, Scopus
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…choose your sources
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Journals
- Probably your biggest source
- E-journals are searchable
- Databases easy to use
- May have to use printed indexes for
older material
Accessing journals- Library homepage
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Books/Textbooks
 Not so up-to-date, but…
 ..A good search covers all the bases!
 Good for bibliographies
Use:
 British Library -http://catalogue.bl.uk/
 Amazon - www.amazon.com
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Grey literature
 eg. theses, conference proceedings,
reports
Use:
 Zetoc (tocs for conference papers and
journals)
 Index of conference proceedings (on BL
catalogue)
 Index to Theses (Library databases)
 UK Clinical Research Network
(http://www.ukcrn.org.uk/index.html)
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Databases
 Wide range of databases in biomedical
sciences
 Available via Library homepage
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Useful databases
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Medline – US, 1946-, biomedical/clinical
sciences
Embase – European, 1974-, toxicology,
pharmacology, interventions
PsycInfo – 1806 -, psychology, psychiatry,
behavioural sciences
Scopus – 54m records (33m back to 1996 ,
21m back to 1823), multi-disciplinary
WoK – 1900 -, 40m references, multidisciplinary
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Controlled vocabularies
Universities
Colleges of
Higher
Education
Higher
Education
Institutions
College
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Controlled vocabularies
 Medline/Cochrane Library – MeSH
 PsycInfo – APA thesaurus
 Embase - Emtree
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‘Keyword’ databases
 Web of Science (Web of Knowledge)
 Scopus
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Okay…
 I have my search terms.
 I’ve chosen my resources.
Anything else I need to know about?
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Oh, yes…
Applying search techniques….
Boolean logic - AND, NOT, OR
To make your searches more or less specific.
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AND
BOTH of the search terms are present
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AND
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OR
At least one of the search terms is present.
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OR
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NOT
Only one of the terms is present
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Getting round word variants – truncation
Most databases use *
So, disease*
returns disease, diseases, diseased
Be careful, rat*
returns rat, rats, rate, rationalise, ratio, ratify…
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Google
 Extremely powerful search engine
 Has INCREDIBLY advanced searching
technology built in, as well as an advanced
searching capacity, but…
…not a lot of people know that…
http://www.google.com/advanced_search
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Google – search operators
 Many search features:
http://www.google.com/help/operators.html
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During the search process
 Re-run searches
 Sign up to alerting services
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Keeping records
Potential scenario….
Important article
Chase all refs
Chase all refs
Check who cited these papers
Check who has cited the paper
etc
etc
Chase particular author
etc
etc
Keeping records
 Use bibliographic software:
EndNoteX7
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Research skills
 http://faculty-tools.ncl.ac.uk/training
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If you have been…
…thanks for listening!
 Any questions?
[email protected]
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