MATH3000 Information skills in Mathematics

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MATH3000 Information skills in Mathematics

• Workshop 1 Literature searching

Dan Pullinger Faculty Team Librarian for
Mathematics d.j.pullinger_at_leeds.ac.uk
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Today were going to cover

• Why literature search?
• How to literature search
• Planning a successful search
• Selecting the right search tools
• Developing your search statement
• Reviewing your search
• Getting full text
• Doing a literature search workbooks

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Why literature search?

• To get an overview of a subject before starting a
  project
• To avoid trying to solve a problem which has
  already been solved by someone else
• To increase your knowledge of a subject
• To demonstrate you are up-to-date
• To put your work into the context of what has
  been done before

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What is the literature?

• Primary sources
• Original information that has not been
  previously published in any form or in any other
  source. Includes journals, patents, and technical
  reports evaluated through a peer-review process
  and disseminated through formal published sources.

• Secondary sources
• Provide evaluation or analysis of primary
  sources often describing or explaining. Includes
  encyclopaedias, dictionaries, handbooks and
  reviews of literature. Useful at the beginning of
  the research process.

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The importance of academic journals

• Primary sources of information, documenting
  original research by academics
• Considered the most important source of scholarly
  information
• Published on a regular basis by scholars,
  documenting their research and allowing the rapid
  dissemination of academic information
• Also have historical importance

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1. Define your information need
7. Evaluate the material found
Plan a successful search by
6. Review your search
2. Select your search tools
3. Identify keywords and phrases
5. Perform your search
4. Combine keywords to form a search statement
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Search tools

• Begin your search by looking for books using the
  Library Catalogue
• Good for a broad overview of your subject area
• Finding out the basics and informing further
  research
• Then use a database to find journal articles
• Primary sources of information
• Can be high-level, detailed and specific
• Often peer reviewed

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Library Catalogue

• Use broad keywords to find books in your subject
  area
• Add limits of date and language to narrow your
  search
• Use an author search to find books by an author
  you know has written about your subject

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Web of Science

• Bibliographic database
• Searchable by keyword, author name, address plus
  many other search options
• Provides cited reference searching
• Records contain information about the author,
  title, date of the publication and usually
  include an abstract but do not contain full text
• To get full text, check the Library Catalogue or
  follow links from within the database

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Peer review a reminder Your guarantee of
academic quality

• All journal articles in Web of Science are peer
  reviewed
• Article is read and critiqued by another academic
  - expert in the same field
• Article sent back to the author for corrections
• Article sent back to the experts who re-read
• If not up to standard, it is sent back or
  rejected
• If the article meets all the requirements of the
  journal, it will be published

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Finding material on your topic using keywords and
phrases

• Break your topic down into keywords and phrases
• Think of synonyms (words that mean the same or
  similar) and acronyms (abbreviations)
• Watch out for alternative spellings
• Use truncation to find the stem of words

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Using truncation

• Tells the database to find plurals and
  alternative spellings without you typing them in
• Shorten the word back to the stem
• Replace endings with the truncation character
• e.g. computing, computers, computation
• comput
• Then use Boolean Logic to combine the resulting
  truncations

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Combine keywords and phrases together

• Use phrase searching
• Link your keywords and phrases together using
  Boolean Logic
• AND
• OR
• NOT

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AND

• Used to narrow a search
• It decreases the number of references
• It makes your search more specific

e.g. statistics AND ecology
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OR

• Used to combine related terms / synonyms
• It increases the number of references
• It makes your search more comprehensive

e.g. fluid dynamics OR fluid mechanics
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NOT

• Used to exclude keywords
• It decreases the number of references
• Use with caution
• You may inadvertently exclude relevant articles

e.g. field theory NOT quantum
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For exampleYou want to look for articles about
the mathematical modelling of tumour growth

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Web of Science citation searching

• Find out whether articles have been cited (and
  used) by other authors
• Discover how a known idea or innovation has been
  confirmed, applied, improved, extended, or
  corrected
• Useful way of finding papers on the same or
  similar subject and to track the development of
  an idea over time

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For exampleYou have a paper by Garth Dales
about convolution-algebras published in 1983, and
you want to find out what other papers have been
published and how the research in this area has
developed since then

• Use Web of Science cited reference search to find
  out who has used (and cited) this paper
• The search found 24 other papers on a similar
  subject and tracks the development of the
  research on convolution-algebras since 1983

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Review your search

• Too many references?
• Narrow down your search by excluding areas - add
  more specific keywords, or specify a keyword that
  you dont want, limit to more recent articles
• Too few references?
• Use more general keywords which might cover
  related or broader areas
• Irrelevant results?
• Think about your choice of keywords
• Exclude results in foreign languages or in
  formats not required
• Ask for help

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Getting full text

• Keep a record of references
• Email from the database, save to disk or print
  out
• Useful for writing your bibliography
• Find full text
• Use the button or View full
  text links where available
• Double-check the Library Catalogue to make sure
  youve not missed anything

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Summary

• Literature searching is important at the start of
  any project
• Take time to plan your search
• Select the right search tools
• Develop your search statement
• Review your search
• Get full text

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Workbooks

• Complete the Literature searching workbook during
  this session
• Answer sheets will be available at the end

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Assignment research log

• Research log to document your search on a subject
  you have selected from the list
• Show how you searched and the reasons why not
  what you know about the subject
• Evaluate and reference all the material you have
  found
• Monday 17 November 2008 by 4pm submit to
  Professor Lesnics office 8.22g in School of
  Mathematics
• 2 copies word processed report no more than
  2,000 words long (25 module mark)

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Next weeks session

• Bragg B
• Finding academic information on the web,
  plagiarism and referencing
• Web resources for this module are available at

http//www.leeds.ac.uk/library/subjects/maths/math
3000.htm