Searching the literature

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Searching the literature

• Finding what you want to know

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what I want to know
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Databases

• Bibliographic databases
• Biblio - books publications
• Graphic - writings records descriptions
• Data - bits of information
• Bases - places you keep coming back to

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Databases

• places you keep coming back to
• for bits of information
• records and descriptions
• of books and publications

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A database

• Land, Life Leisure

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Finding your way

• Keep your wits about you
• Give yourself plenty of time

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Finding your way

• Patience
• Perseverance
• Confidence

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Tricks of the trade
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• Truncation
• Wild cards
• Quotes
• Operators
• Limits

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Truncation

• Using a symbol to represent the ending of a word
  (plurals)

Rabbit Flower?
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Wild cards

• Using a symbol to represent part of a word

Behavi?r L?nx
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Quotes

• Use quotation marks to fix a phrase

farmland birds common agricultural policy
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OperatorsBoolean Operators

• Some databases allow the use of
• AND
• OR
• NOT -

cattle AND mastitis
cattle mastitis
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Limits

• Title
• Author
• Source
• Date
• Type of publication

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Before you start

• Write it out
• What do I want to know?

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Getting ready
The information jungle a walk on the wild side

• Divide your paper down the middle
• Make a list of all the key words

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In other words

• On the other side of the paper make a list of
  alternative terms

Jungle Information Walk
Forest Woods News Data Paths Tracks
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Use your tricks

• Check if you can
• Use truncation
• Use quotes

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Tricks

• Forest (-s -try)
• Wood (-land -s)
• forest? walk?
• long distance paths

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In the database

• Land, Life Leisure
• Rural Sciences materials
• inside journals and magazines, reports and
  conference proceedings
• 90 in Thomas Parry Library at the University of
  Wales Aberystwyth

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Get going

• Do a rough search
• Put some terms in
• See how many hits
• See how many are useful
• Look for clues
• Look for other terms
• Look for authors
• Look for organisations

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Plan B

• Go back to piece of paper
• Refine your search

Too few hits? Try different terms Try broader
terms
Too many hits? Try more terms Try more tricks
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The search

• Make several searches
• Different combinations of terms
• Different databases
• Different types of materials

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Cleaning up

• Note down anything that looks useful
• Think about it

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Authority

• Who wrote it
• Who published it
• peer reviewed journal
• publish and be damned
• commercial interest
• When was it published

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Make a choice

• Select the best
• Authoritative
• Fit for purpose

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• Book?
• When was it published
• Who wrote it
• Article?
• Who wrote it
• Who published it
• Why?
• Research paper?
• Date
• Authority
• Methods
• Does it support/contradict other work

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Lets go hunting