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East Asian Studies 331. Searching at the TFDL September, 2013 Rosvita Vaska (vaska@ucalgary.ca). The objectives of the “information literate student” are to. Be familiar with library resources and information literacy tools as they relate to the field of research
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East Asian Studies 331 Searching at the TFDL September, 2013 Rosvita Vaska (vaska@ucalgary.ca)
The objectives of the “information literate student” are to • Be familiar with library resources and information literacy tools as they relate to the field of research • Understand the stages and processes involved in doing research • Be able to assess your need for information, search for and evaluate this information, synthesize this information with your own ideas, and present your findings in written form • Be familiar with a number of terms and phrases pertinent to research • Be acquainted with a number of methodological and theoretical approaches • Be able to cite print and electronic sources according to established standards • Acquire skills that can be used for any other assignments and courses
Steps for Successful Research • 1. Define your information need • Try and get a “sense” of what your topic is about. • Use general reference resources (i.e. dictionaries, glossaries, encyclopedia) to identify concepts and terminology central to your topic.
Steps for Successful Research • 2. Select information sources • Based on your findings in step 1, identify sources that will provide you the kind of information you need. • Will you search the library catalogue for general resources? • Will you use a database to find appropriate articles and reports?
Steps for Successful Research • 3. Define your search strategy • Map out the terminology you think will yield appropriate citations. • Decide whether or not to use controlled vocabulary (subject headings or descriptors), free text searches (word searches), search for a particular author, or a combination of these. • Consider using wildcards and truncation to widen your searches.
Steps for Successful Research • 4. Execute your search • Just do it! • If you are looking for books on shelves, consider finding one relevant item, locate it on the shelf, and then examine the other books that are beside it
Steps for Successful Research • 5. Evaluate the information you gather • Is the information you found relevant to your topic? • Did you find too many articles/books that are irrelevant to your topic? • Did you find too few articles to adequately cover all aspects of your topic? • Can you think of any aspect of the topic that is not covered in your search results?
Steps for Successful Research • 6. Start the process over again if necessary • If you find you have too few results, consider a broader, more general view of the topic. • If you have too many citations, consider narrowing the topic down.
Remember – There are 3 Layers • 1. Global = The BIG BOX • 2. Summon • 3. Catalogue
Boolean Operators AND(narrows search, retrieving records containing all of the terms) OR (broadens search, retrieving records containing any of the terms) NOT(excludes terms from a search, retrieving records that do not contain the term following it.) Truncation/Wildcard *system* = returns records on system, systems, systematic ? wom?n= returns records on both woman and women (singular and plural forms) Nesting Parenthesis, ( ) keep related terms together If searching for an exact phrase, enclose phrase in quotation marks, “ ”
Academic Search Complete(Multi Search) – Resultssearching for “Chinese society” AND film AND art
Ebrary • Includes more than 30,000 titles in the areas of Business and economics; career and general education; computers, engineering and applied sciences; humanities; science, medicine and applied health; social and behavioral sciences and more.
