learning skills week 1 finding academic resources 12/06/13 caroline stirling & andrew kirk, main...

Learning Skills Week 1Finding academic resources12/06/13

Caroline Stirling & Andrew Kirk, Main Library Helpdesk

FINDING ACADEMIC RESOURCES

We’re here to help you get the most out of the time you spend in the Library during your summer school and also to give you a head start when you begin university.

There’s a lot of information out there that you’re going to have to deal with and we’d like to show you a few tried and tested methods of dealing with the sheer mind numbing scale of it and making it much more manageable.

EVALUATING RESOURCES• Discuss pros and cons of searching the

Internet

• Assess the merits of some resources I’ve brought along

• Talk about some criteria we can use to help us with the process of evaluating resources

• Caroline and Nicola will show you the more practical side of searching for resources

EVALUATING RESOURCES

• We hope to save you time by helping you find academic resources quickly and filter out less useful ones

• We hope to help you get good marks by showing you how to find academic resources

The outcome ?


• Resource – a book, journal article, document, film, youtube video, podcast etc. etc.

• We’ll define an academic resource a bit later

What is a resource?

Question

• How many of you, being honest, would Google your essay topic when you were first given it?


• 39,900,000 results

• In at number fifteen was a page about genetic engineering in Star Trek!

• One GE industry site next to the Greenpeace site

• There were a few results from the first page that were useful as a general introduction (e.g. BBC-GCSE, Scientific American)

Googling ‘Genetic Engineering’

“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” Mitch Kapor

Photo © Will Sherman



Information overload

• Googling is a time-consuming and hit-and-miss way of searching for academic information

• You will get thousands of results, very few of which will be useful other than as general background information

• It will be difficult, if not impossible, to assess pages which have been written anonymously

• It will be very difficult to assess a page just by reading the blurb on the results page


Examples of resources

“Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.”

Kofi Annan, Former Secretary-General of the United Nations

“Information isn't powerful. Information isn't power. ... Hey, who's got the most information? Librarians do! It's hard to imagine a group of people with less power than librarians.” -John Brockman

• Having a strategy when you’re evaluating resources

saves time and ensures you’re not using material that

is badly researched, badly written and biased

• To go back to Annan/Brockman, information

becomes powerful when you begin to be critical about

it

• One tactic is to have a list of criteria


Information overload


•Scholarly/Academic or Popular? (peer reviewed?) i.e. work assessed and evaluated by other specialists in the field before it is published. If using a database – use the ‘peer reviewed’ checkbox. If this is not available look at the ‘editorial statement’ in the journal itself.

•Authority Who wrote it? What are their credentials. Are they Professor, or someone on the web with a pseudonym? Who would you trust?

•Bias Does the person have a political, cultural, professional bias? You don’t necessarily need to know the author’s background, but you may be able to infer this from the text itself. Links on a website may also indicate this.

•Currency When was it written? Old is not necessarily bad – it may be a seminal text in the field.

•Documentation Does it include a list of sources which would suggest that the author has read widely and is not just expressing his or her own opinion without understanding the arguments? For websites, you might also want to look at the links. Are they trying to steer your attention in a particular direction?


• The good news is, by relying less on Google and more on Library resources, a lot of this work has already been done for you.

• The books in the Library are generally chosen by lecturers, who are specialists in their field, for teaching purposes

• Books and other electronic resources are chosen by specialist subject librarians who will be using similar criteria to the ones we’ve discussed

• Books

• Book chapters

• Journal articles

• Newspaper articles

• Web sites

• DVDs

Reading lists

List of essential and/or recommended readings for your course

Bennet, Peter. (2007) Film studies: the essential resource, London: Routledge.

Brophy, Philip. (2004) 100 modern soundtracks: BFI screen guides, London: British Film Institute.

Sbardellati, John. (2008) Brassbound G-Men and celluloid reds: the FBI’s search for communist propaganda in wartime Hollywood. Film History. 20(4), 412-436.

Watson, Paul. (2003) Critical approaches to Hollywood cinema: authorship, genre and stars. IN: Nelmes, Jill. Introduction to film studies, London: Routledge, pp130-183.

A Film Studies reading list

Finding resources from your reading list

• Book

– Search the catalogue for Title or Author (surname first)

• Journal article

– Search the catalogue for Journal Title

• Book chapter

– Search in catalogue for book title or author of book (surname first)

Brophy, Philip. (2004) 100 modern soundtracks: BFI screen guides, London: British Film Institute

Sbardellati, John. (2008) Brassbound G-Men and celluloid reds: the FBI’s search for communist propaganda in wartime Hollywood. Film History. 20(4), 412-436.

Watson, Paul. (2003) Critical approaches to Hollywood cinema: authorship, genre and stars. IN: Nelmes, Jill. Introduction to film studies, London: Routledge, pp130-183.

Library websitehttp://www.ed.ac.uk/is/library


Searching the Classic Catalogue


Catalogue record


E-journal record


E-journal access

Finding books on the shelves

• Look at same shelfmark for more items on the same

subject

• Search for other material by the same author(s)

• Look at the bibliographies of articles, books to find what

the author used for their research

• Use ‘cited by’, ‘more like this’, ‘related articles’ links

• Keyword searching

Beyond your reading list

Expanding your reading

• What does it involve?

Identifying the key concepts of your topic – helps you

decide your research focus

Coming up with alternative keywords to search with

Combining your keywords and apply various search

techniques to improve your search results

• Why is this useful?

Helps you find relevant resources

More efficient searching process.

Beyond your reading list

Keyword searching

• Aquabrowser – alternative version of the catalogue. More ‘free’ searching & more flexible so better than Classic catalogue for keyword searches. http://aquabrowser.lib.ed.ac.uk

• Searcher – a wide ranging resource that searches through most of the library’s databases, online journals and the library catalogue. Good for an initial general search to find out what is available. Good for helping you identify key resources.http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/searcher

• Subject databases – good for finding information about journal articles, newspaper articles, books, etc. You may sometimes get full-text material through databases if the library has an electronic version of the item. Most are subject specific e.g. Medline is good for finding articles within the area of medicine.http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/library-databases

Keyword searching: what to use

Good library resources

Keyword searching: where to start

Step 1: identifying the key concepts of your topic

Have a really good think!

Example:

Discuss the extent to which violence on

television affects teenagers.

•What is the question you are being asked to answer?

•What are the key concepts?

• Violence

• Television

• Teenagers

Keyword searching: what’s next

Step 2: identifying alternative keywords and related terms

Not everyone uses the same words to describe the same concept. For example, an author may use ‘adolescent’ instead of ‘teenager’.

You therefore need to think of other ways your key concepts can be expressed.

Violence•aggression•brutality•violent•anger

Television•TV•telly•media

Teenagers•teen•adolescent•juvenile•youth

**Remember to include synonyms, alternative spellings such as US/UK, plurals, abbreviations, acronyms, etc. Use a Thesaurus if one is available.

Use connecting words AND, OR or NOT (Boolean operators).

These will help you widen or narrow your searches.

Keyword searching: Boolean operators

Step 3: combining your keywords

Keyword searching: Tips

These search techniques will help improve your results.

truncation

•Keywords may have variant endings.•Using singular form will only retrieve records which have that word in that form.•Truncation allows you to look for all forms of word.•Type in start of word plus truncation symbols ($ * ? #) depending on which database you are using e.g.

Teen* would find teenteensteenagerteenagers

•Be careful with truncation. “Wom$” will look for “women” and “woman” but will also look for “womb” and “wombat”.

phrase searching

•If you have common terms such as “north sea”, “oil spill”, “climate change” then put them in inverted commas “”.•Will help you get more relevant results.

help

Remember to take the time to look at the ‘help’ pages within resources. These will give you tips on how to use the resource more effectively and will save you time.

Keyword searching

Limiting and expanding results

Too many results:

•Add additional keywords with AND.

•Use more specific keywords.

•Use thesaurus terms.

•Limit by particular fields.

Too few results:

•Check your spelling.

•Use truncation.

•Use all possible synonyms for topic.

•Terminology can differ.

•Use alternative spelling.

•Combine keywords using OR.

•Check the thesaurus terms.

Examples

Web of Knowledge (WOK) database – search #1

Keywords = teen* television violenceUse of truncation to expand resultsLimited by date 2000-2013= 36 results

•Not very many results. WOK is a large database and covers a wide range of subjects so would expect to get more results. •May need to think about adding more keywords.•Use more truncation to expand results.

Examples

Web of Knowledge (WOK) – search #1 results

Examples

Web of Knowledge (WOK) database – search #2

Keywords = teen* adolescen* television violen*Use of truncation to expand results. Use of OR to expand results.Limited by date 2000-2013= 340 results. Refine by Document Type (articles)on results page = 303.

•More results and more of them seem more relevant to our topic. •We can narrow the results even more by refining by certain criteria. In this case we chose to refine the results by Document type to ‘articles’.

Examples

Web of Knowledge (WOK) – search #2 results

• If you see a link to full-text or PDF within a database

record then it usually means that the library has access to

the online version of the journal/item so you can get free

access.

• If you don’t see a link then check the library catalogue for

the journal title to see if the library holds the print version.

• If you see this link then click on it. If we have

access to the full-text then you will see a full-text link. If

not, then check the library catalogue for the print version.

When you are searching databases you will not always get access

to the full-text of an article, etc

• Finding resources

http://edin.ac/13RB2TZ

• Subject guides

http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/subject-guides

• Databases by subject

http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/databases-subjects

• Information about databases and searching online

http://edin.ac/14s6Gte

Further information

Some useful links to help you with your research

Student card

• Please always bring it with you onto campus

• We’re able to issue two day passes

• If you’re trying to borrow books for the first time you’ll need to come to the Helpdesk for us to enter your details

Adjustments for students with disabilities

The Library works closely with the Student Disability Service to

provide adjustments for students.

7.3% of the student population disclosed a disability in 2013, a

significant proportion of the whole population.

Some examples of adjustments:

•Double loan time on Short Loan and Reserve books

•Staff assistance with locating texts

•Access to study room

•Accessible technology (Dragon, Texthelp, OCR, Mind Mapping etc.)

http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/student-disability-service/

new-students

If you have any problems please just ask…

Help

Good luck!!

[email protected] (or [email protected])

0131 650 3409

In person at Main Library

Site library Helpdesks can also provide help and assistance.

(Moray House Library is the site library for the School of Education

and has a lot of material on the topics you cover).

Check opening and staffed hours at:

http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/library-opening

learning skills week 1 finding academic resources 12/06/13 caroline stirling & andrew kirk, main...

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