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Erika GavilletWalton Library

Search strategies – how to cover all the bases

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Define your topic

Be clear on what you are asking

Keep the question as simple but as specific as possible

Analyse the elements of your question main subjects or concepts population group - sex, age range publication language publication date

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Sample question

What has been published in English since 1999 on the relationship between heavy drinking and adolescent behaviour?

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Analyse the question…

subject 1 subject 2 population group publication type publication

language publication date

heavy alcohol drinkingadolescent behaviour(adolescents)journal articlesEnglish1999-2014

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Your main concepts

Make a list of all your main search terms

Check for alternate terms and synonyms

Use thesauri and dictionaries, Use controlled vocabularies (MeSH

headings)Most indexes and cataloguers with use MeSHMeSH is NOT just medical terminology

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Population group

Age

Sex

Race

Socio-economic grouping

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Dates

- How far back do you need to go?

- Earliest electronic resources are in the 40’s but most go back to 80’s

- Might need to consult printed indexes

- Recent work? Use review articles, Cochrane, Web of Science, Scopus

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…choose your sources

Journals- Probably your biggest source- E-journals are searchable- Databases easy to use- May have to use printed

indexes for older material

Accessing journals- Library homepage

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Books/Textbooks

Not so up-to-date, but… ..A good search covers all the bases! Good for bibliographies

Use: British Library -http://catalogue.bl.uk/ Amazon - www.amazon.com

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Grey literature

eg. theses, conference proceedings, reports

Use: Zetoc (tocs for conference papers and

journals) Index of conference proceedings (on BL

catalogue) Index to Theses (Library databases) UK Clinical Research Network

(http://www.ukcrn.org.uk/index.html)

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Databases

Wide range of databases in biomedical sciences

Available via Library homepage

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Useful databases

Medline – US, 1946-, biomedical/clinical sciences

Embase – European, 1974-, toxicology, pharmacology, interventions

PsycInfo – 1806 -, psychology, psychiatry, behavioural sciences

Scopus – 54m records (33m back to 1996 , 21m back to 1823), multi-disciplinary

WoK – 1900 -, 40m references, multi-disciplinary

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Controlled vocabularies

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Controlled vocabularies

Medline/Cochrane Library – MeSH

PsycInfo – APA thesaurus

Embase - Emtree

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‘Keyword’ databases

Web of Science (Web of Knowledge)

Scopus

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Okay…

I have my search terms. I’ve chosen my resources.

Anything else I need to know about?

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Oh, yes…

Applying search techniques….

Boolean logic - AND, NOT, OR

To make your searches more or less specific.

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AND

BOTH of the search terms are present

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AND

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OR

At least one of the search terms is present.

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OR

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NOT

Only one of the terms is present

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Getting round word variants – truncation

Most databases use *So, disease* returns disease, diseases, diseasedBe careful, rat*returns rat, rats, rate, rationalise, ratio,

ratify…

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Google

Extremely powerful search engine

Has INCREDIBLY advanced searching technology built in, as well as an advanced searching capacity, but…

…not a lot of people know that…

http://www.google.com/advanced_search

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Google – search operators

Many search features:

http://www.google.com/help/operators.html

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During the search process

Re-run searches

Sign up to alerting services

Keeping records

Potential scenario….Important article

Chase all refs Check who has cited the paper

Chase all refs Check who cited these papers

Chase particular author

etc etc etc etc

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Keeping records

Use bibliographic software:

EndNoteX7

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Research skills

http://faculty-tools.ncl.ac.uk/training

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If you have been…

…thanks for listening!

Any questions?

medliaison@ncl.ac.uk