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1 financial crisis
2 social media
3 young people
4 comic book
Try a key word search of your library catalogue using these synonyms and compare your results with your results from Exercise 4.
Accessing e-books and e-journals
To access an e-book or e-journal, you normally select the item, which then takes you to the provider’s website. Each provider has its own website so they all look and work differently. In many cases, because the library pays for access to electronic resources, you may be directed to a login box where you have to type in your student identification number and password. This might be referred to as ‘Shibboleth’, ‘Institutional login’ or a similar term.
Glossary
copyright If someone has copyright on a piece of writing or music, it is illegal to reproduce or perform it without their permission.
Individual e-journal articles can be read online, downloaded onto a memory stick or printed. E-books are subject to copyright regulations, which means that you can only download or print one chapter or section, or five per cent of the total number of pages. If you are not sure how much of an item you can copy, check with your librarian or look for relevant notices – these are usually displayed near photocopiers. You can, however, read as much of the book online as you wish. Many e-books providers also allow you to make notes and highlight text, which you can save and view when you next access the book.
Borrowing print books and journals
Different libraries have different lending policies. Books can generally be borrowed for several weeks. In many cases you may be able to ‘renew’ an item, that is, borrow it for an extended period of time if no other user has requested it. It may also be possible to ‘reserve’ an item, in other words, to ask that an item be kept for you when it is returned by another user. Some libraries may contain a ‘short loan’ collection, that is, a selection of books that are in high-demand. These books may be available for borrowing for only a few days or hours at a time. Reference books, such as dictionaries, cannot normally be borrowed.
If your library does not stock an item that you wish to borrow, you may be able to ask your library to borrow the item from another library. This is called an ‘inter-library loan’.
The most recent issues of journals are not normally available for borrowing. You may read them in the library or photocopy one article within an issue. Note that there is usually a small charge for photocopies. Older issues of journals can normally be borrowed.
When you borrow items from the library, you should make a note of the ‘return’ or ‘due’ date. If you do not return items in time, you will probably have to pay a fine. For short-loan items, fines can be charged by the hour.
Exercise 6
Log on to your library website and look for answers to questions 1–5.
1 How many items can you borrow at once?
2 How long can you borrow items for?
3 Can you reserve or renew items online?
4 Are fines charged for overdue items? If so, what is the rate?
5 How do you request an inter-library loan?
Using a database
A database is an electronic catalogue or list of published materials. Library catalogues are databases; however, library catalogues have two main limitations: they only list items available in the library and they do not normally list articles separately. If you only have the name of an article or you want to know what publications are available on a particular topic, you need to use another database. There are general databases, such as JSTOR or ArticleFirst, which list publications on a wide variety of subjects. There are also specialist databases which list items relating to specific subjects or academic disciplines.
Glossary
credible Credible means able to be trusted or believed.
Academic databases are very useful for essays, because they only include items that are ‘peer reviewed’, that is, judged to be academically credible by other experts. Another advantage of databases is that they often provide not just the bibliographic information about the article (the title, author, year and so on) but also a short summary of the article contents. This is called an abstract.
For more information on abstracts, see Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo).
You can use open access databases, that is, databases that are available to the general public through the internet, or subscribe to particular databases yourself. However, in most cases, it is easiest to access databases through your university library catalogue. Your library will probably subscribe to many different databases. You can search the databases to see what has been published on your topic, and then check your library catalogue to see if the items you want are available in your library. If your library does not stock an item, you may be able to obtain it through an inter-library loan.
If you know which databases you want, search for them by title. Check your course reading list or ask a librarian for recommended databases for your subject. If you do not know which databases to use, search for them by subject. For example, if you are looking for information about how children learn to read, you could look for databases under education.
When you have selected the database you want to use, you can search for items in the same way that you search your library catalogue: by title, author and key words. However, as with e-book and e-journal providers, each database has its own website so they all look and work slightly differently.
Tips
When you select databases in your library catalogue search facility, make sure you type in the name of a database, not the name of the journal or article that you are looking for.
If you do not know the name of a database, search for one by subject.
If you get poor results with one database, try searching for articles using a different database within your subject area.
Advanced keyword searches
Searching for items in a database requires a lot of skill and practice. There are several ways in which you can make keyword searches more efficient.
Searching for phrases
For most databases, if you wish to search for a phrase, rather than individual key words, you can place quotation marks (“…”) around the phrase. For example if you are looking for articles for the essay question: Examinethe impact of management style on teamwork in organizations, you can type “management style” in the search box. The database will list all of the articles containing that phrase. If you type the words in without quotation marks, the database will list all of the articles that contain the words management and style in separate places. You may end up with a list containing many irrelevant articles, for example articles about style in fashion or architecture.
Exercise 7
Look at essay questions 1–4. Put quotation marks around the phrases you would use in a key word search.
1 Critically evaluate media coverage of the 2008 banking crisis.
2 Relate the principal factors that are commonly thought to influence a person’s choice of life partner to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
3 Compare and contrast electricity generation from wind power versus electricity generation from hydropower in terms of efficiency, value for money and environmental impact.
4 How does online social networking affect the way adolescents form friendships?
Truncation
Another technique that you can use to search more efficiently is to truncate key words so that articles containing words in the same word family are also listed in your search result. For example, if you are looking for articles about banking crises, you can truncate the word banking by typing a * after the root bank: bank*. This will ensure that articles containing the words bank, banks, bank’s and banking will appear in your search results.
Glossary
truncate To truncate something is to shorten it.
Exercise 8
Truncate one word in each of the phrases 1–3. What additional words would be included in the search?
1 environmental impact
2 online social networking
3 form friendships
Boolean operators
A third way of making your search more efficient is to use ‘Boolean operators’. This involves combining your key words using ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘not’ to make your search either more specific or more general. For example, if you want only articles that discuss both children and adolescents, enter ‘children and adolescents’. The more words you join with ‘and’, the smaller the number of results. Entering ‘children and adolescents and friendship’ will only get you articles that discuss both children and adolescents in relation to friendship.
If you want to widen your search results, use ‘or’. For example if you want all of the articles that discuss only children as well as all of the articles that discuss only adolescents, you should search for ‘children or adolescents’. ‘Or’ is also useful for entering synonyms into your search. If the topic you are interested in is commonly referred to in a number of ways, you should use ‘or’ to capture as many relevant articles as possible. Some authors, for example, may use the word teenager instead of adolescent. In this case, you should search for ‘adolescents or teenagers’. The more words you join with ‘or’ the larger the number of results.
It is common to combine ‘or’ and ‘and’ operators. For example, if you are interested in how adolescents form friendships, you might search for: ‘adolescents or teenagers and friendship’. Note: for some databases, you need to put terms you want to connect by ‘or’ in brackets, for example: ‘(adolescents or teenagers) and friendship’.
Using the operator ‘not’ narrows your search by excluding any article with the word or phrase which follows ‘not’. This is useful when one of your key words has multiple meanings. For example the word capital can mean a sum of money or it can refer to a city where government is based. If you are only interested in the first meaning, you can enter ‘capital not city’. This makes it more likely that your results will only include articles relating to finance.
Search screens vary in format, so in some cases you may need to type in the operators yourself, in others you may select them from a drop down menu. Spend some time practising using different databases or search engines.
Tips
Use Boolean operators to refine your key word searches.
Use ‘and’ to combine key words and narrow your results.
Use ‘or’ to include synonyms for key words and widen your results.
Use ‘not’ to exclude irrelevant items.
Exercise 9
Prepare to do a key word search of the essay question: Is generosity an innate human trait? by following steps 1–4 below.
1Underline the key words.
2Write a synonym for generosity.
3Decide where to use quotation marks to indicate a phrase.
4Write your search terms using the Boolean operators ‘or’ and ‘and’.
Making the most of the library
As more and more information becomes available online, you may be tempted to do all of your research by computer and avoid your university library altogether. However, if you do this, you will miss out on a very useful resource. In addition to print and electronic copies of books and academic journals, your library is likely to have:
specialist librarians who can give you advice on resources in your subject area
training courses on using library facilities such as databases
quiet study spaces
printing, photocopying and IT facilities
access to inter-library loans.
Using the internet for research
If you do not have access to a library, searching for information on the internet using a search engine such as Google ™ can be a good option. Remember that the internet contains vast amounts of information, so good key word search skills are essential. Most search engines have advanced search options which allow you to use Boolean operators to narrow down your search. Sometimes these may appear as options such as ‘any of these words’ (= and) or ‘all of these words’ (= or).
Glossary
bias Bias is a tendency to prefer one person or thing to another, and to favour that person or thing.
When you search the internet, you also need to be able to identify academically credible sources within your search results. Whereas library catalogues and academic databases contain items which have been selected for their academic credibility, internet search results will automatically list any online material which contains your search terms. In addition, most web search engines are commercial businesses which rely on income from advertising. Companies may pay to have their web pages ranked higher in search results or to have their web pages advertised alongside. This means that you need to look carefully for commercial bias when selecting information for your essay.
Using a specialized search engine facility such as Google Scholar ™ can help because it lists scholarly publications such as journal articles, books, theses and so on; however, you still need to evaluate the source of the items you find listed.
For more information on choosing suitably academic material, see Chapter 3 (#u16fa79b7-b29d-595f-84af-5cbd640de507).
Exercise 10
Enter the search terms ‘generosity’ and ‘innate human trait’ into Google ™ and Google Scholar™ and compare the first ten items returned by each search result. How many of the items appear to be scholarly?
Remember
When looking for information for an essay, begin with sources listed in your course reading lists and handouts.
Learn to use your university library catalogue.
Get to know where print books and journals in your subject are shelved.
Make sure you know your institutional login so that you can access e-journals and e-books held by your library.
Find out what academic databases are recommended for your subject.
Learn to refine key word searches by using phrases, truncation and Boolean operators.
Find out what additional services your library has to offer – take advantage of any training available.
When using the internet for research, narrow your key word searches and be prepared to evaluate items listed in your results for academic credibility.
3
Choosing the right source material (#ulink_a3e58215-37f1-5933-96b7-4c92beff6932)
Aims
choose academically credible materials (#ulink_16d91ccd-4e7f-5dd3-b993-00287efcdcb9)
