Information Resources

1

• Information Resources
• Search strategies
• Resources
• Getting the full-text
• Rowena Stewart
• JCM Library,
• Rowena.Stewart_at_ed.ac.uk,
• tel [phone]

2
Before Looking for Information, Think About

• Your topic
• What does it mean? What are its underlying
  concepts?
• Words and phrases related to your topic and its
  concepts (search terms)
• broader descriptive terms as well as narrow
  specific or synonymous ones
• alternative spellings.
• informal and scientific/technical terms

Use what you know already and then use what you
find to inform your search
3
Before Looking for Information, Think About

• The sort of information you need for the work you
  have to do.
• The level of detail you need, eg would a general
  overview of a related subject be useful?
• What resources have the sort of information at
  the level of detail you want?
• Setting criteria for the information you want to
  read
• Are there any filters, eg experimental conditions
  or techniques, you want to apply before deciding
  on reading or using something?

? These thoughts help focus your search
4
Getting down your ideas
Mind maps Spider diagrams Tables
5
Sources of InformationBooks

• If a broad overview or a general introduction
  would be useful, finding a book on your topic
  could be a good place to start. Also dictionaries
  and encyclopaedia.
• No books on your topic?
• ? Think of the sort of books which could have
  chapters or sections covering your topic
• find a suitable shelfmark (eg TJ211 for robotics)

? check indexes/contents pages of books.
6
Sources of InformationWeb

• General or subject specific search engines (use
  the Help advice to make your search more
  effective)
• Full-text repositories or e-publication host
  sites (arxiv.org, ScienceDirect)
• Society etc websites (IoP, ACM, NASA..)
• Patents (espacenet, USPTO)

Evaluating Information

• Currency recent information? Does it matter?
• Relevancy does it meet the requirements youve
  spent time thinking about?
• Accuracy have you spotted mistakes elsewhere?
• Authority do you trust the place youve found
  the information?
• Objectivity is there bias? Does it matter?

7
Sources of InformationCatalogue

• Library catalogue and e-journal pages tell you
  what journals we have, eg Physical Review. Not
  who has published what in those journals,
• ie Not that Bohr Wheeler, in 1939, published in
  it the article The mechanism of nuclear fission

• Bibliographic Databases
• Contain details of millions of articles from
  1000s of (mostly peer-reviewed) publications
• Are usually subject specific
• Have functions designed to help researchers
  find academic reading material,
• But
• 1) provide citations/abstracts for material but
  only link out to full-text
• 2) are not limited to what the library has

8
(No Transcript)
9
Getting the full-text Remember

• If a link doesnt get you the full-text, even one
  which goes to the library catalogue, treat the
  reference like any other and note down enough
  information to locate the article or paper.
• Use the library catalogue to see if the Library
  has the journal or conference proceedings in
  which the article was published.
• If we dont have it, ask library staff about
  ways of getting what you want.

10
Searching bibliographic databases

• Be specific when you start but, if you are not
  finding anything to read use the broader words
  and phrases youve thought of.
• ?see what you get and use further search terms
  from your results
• ?read the appropriate references in useful papers
  
• find articles which have, in their reference
  list, a paper youve found useful.

11
Getting to bibliographic databases
12
Citing References

• Acknowledging what youve read in your work
• allows those reading the record of what youve
  done to read the sources you have read.
• credits, and shows you have read, the key
  relevant work and can use it to support your
  arguments thereby indicating where your work has
  taken you further.

• Tools (EndNote, Mendeley, JabRef)
• Retain sets of references youve read or want to
  read or have cited
• Autoformat citations and reference lists in
  different styles.
• EndNote (on OA computers) will export references
  in BibTex format and theres a web version.

13
Bibliographic DatabasesInspec
14
Bibliographic DatabasesInspec