Section

 

Planning your search

Planning your search is critical in successful information retrieval.

Before you start searching:

• What do you need to know? - analyse your assignment question carefully for key themes
• What type of material do you need and at what level? - do you need original research, reviews, practice guidelines?

Where should you look ?

• Books to get an overview of your topic - to find these use the Library catalogue,
• Journal articles are usually more up to date, and also much more specific and research oriented than books - to find these use databases. or seek help from the librarians.
• Internet - Subject gateways are usually more effective than general search engines like Google for finding authoritative material in your subject. The Intute subject gateways are especially useful, but they have stopped collecting resources since 2011.

Analyse your question:

• Identify the main concepts
• Think about different keywords to express these concepts

Work out your strategy:

• Search for each concept separately
• Use subject headings where available to assist you
• Combine individual searches using Boolean logic:
  • to combine keywords or headings for the same concept with OR to broaden your search
  • to retrieve all selected terms relevant to your topic with AND to narrow your search
  • NOTcan be used to exclude a term or previous set

Use Limits to refine search results so you get exactly what you want, e.g. language, gender, age group, publication type.