ELISE for Postgraduate Students - Enabling Library Information Skills for Everyone

Select appropriate methods or tools

You are now ready to commence your research. This may be the longest and most complex part of your assignment but it is crucial; a good answer requires good sources. The key tools that you will use are the Library catalogue (LRD), Sirius – the gateway to electronic resources and the Subject Guides. Here is a list of starting points for finding the most common sources.

• Scholarly books and textbooks
  Those held in the UNSW Library collection can be found by searching in the catalogue, also known as the Library Resources Database (LRD), or in Sirius. If you do not have easy access to the UNSW collection, and wish to find books in a library near you, then Libraries Australia is an online database of the holdings of most of the major university, state and research libraries in Australia and of many public libraries. You may also be eligible for UNSW Library services for off-campus users.
• Scholarly journals
  The journals themselves are listed in the catalogue (LRD) and in Libraries Australia by the title of the journal. To find an article in a journal you use Sirius to access a database that indexes the journal articles or the Online Access link from the catalogue (LRD) journal record. Sometimes the database that indexes the journals also contains the full text of the articles. You may also use Google Scholar.
• Industry and professional publications
  If they are books or if they are published regularly, follow the advice for scholarly books or scholarly journals above. Some databases allow you to limit your search for journal articles to refereed (scholarly) journals or to trade and professional publications. Company and professional association web sites are another good source.
• Government publications
  Many government departments publish primarily on the Internet so it may be quite difficult to obtain hard copy even of very lengthy government reports. If available, they will be included in the LRD and Libraries Australia. To help you find statistical information, the Library publishes the Statistics Subject Guide. The Library’s Guide to Legal Research - Legal Databases will help you to find legal information.
• Popular media
  This can often be found on the Internet. The Library subscribes to a database called Factiva which contains the full text of much popular media.

Identify search terms

Your next step is to make a list of all the terms that you will use to undertake your search. You should start with keywords, including variant spellings, and any synonyms that you know. If you have not already done so, then this is the time to read up on your topic in the course textbook, course materials or an encyclopaedia. These sources, which give you a brief overview of the subject area, are very important starting points. They will tell you the words that are commonly used to describe the topic and these words can become your search terms. They will also put the topic into context and so may give suggestions for broader search terms if specific terms you’ve used fail to produce enough search results. Also, putting your topic in context and giving you a basic understanding of it will help you to sort the relevant from the irrelevant in your search results.

Construct and implement a search strategy

Now you have identified some search terms you have to string them together so that the database that you are using can perform the search effectively. Each database is different and to be a truly effective searcher you must develop a habit of getting to know how a particular database works. Reading the database ‘help’ screens is a good starting point. Here are some general principles so that you will know what to look for.

Boolean operators – these are the most common way of linking terms.

And finds items that contain both terms
Or finds items that either or both terms
Not finds items that contain one term but not the other.

'Not' should be used with caution, and preferably not at all if you are searching in a full text database

Click here for an easy to read guide on Boolean searching.

Proximity operators

These find two terms in a defined position to each other. The most common one is A 'w/n' B, meaning find A within 'n' (number of your choice) words of B. You may be able to search for terms within the same sentence or paragraph or for one term preceding another. Proximity operators are extremely useful for searching full text databases where 'and' often produces too many hits.

Phrase searching

You may want to search for two terms as a phrase because the phrase has a meaning of its own e.g. 'race relations'. Sometimes if you simply type 'race relations' the database will look for the phrase. But a lot of databases will supply an automatic 'and', so 'race relations' becomes 'race AND relations'; in these databases the most common way to do a phrase search is to enclose the phrase in quotation marks: "race relations".

Use parentheses to alter the grouping of terms

(directed or managing) and teams will find 'directed teams' and 'managing teams'
directed or managing teams will find 'directed' in any context or 'managing teams'. It would find an article on 'films directed by Alfred Hitchcock'

Fields

Structured databases are divided into fields e.g. author, title, journal. This allows you to look for all works by an author, or all articles in an issue of a journal. Check the help screens of the database that you are using to find which fields are available and how they may be used to enhance your search.

Limits

Many databases allow you to limit your search in some way. The most common limit is by date – a week, a month, a year or a range of dates. You may also be able to restrict your search to refereed journals. A search engine may allow you to restrict your search to a domain or site.

Truncation and wildcards

Wildcards replace single characters and are mostly used to find both singular and plural forms, or both English and American spellings. Truncation is used to shorten a word to find all forms of it e.g. manag* finds manage, manages, managed, managing, management. You should shorten the word to its stem but no further; man* will also find manly, mankind, manipulate etc. The symbols used vary from database to database.

Module 2 Links lead to a number of useful Guides; some of these resources will assist you to construct a search strategy using the resources introduced in this Module, and some will tell you how to obtain further assistance. They provide details on, for example, how to:

• Use individual databases (Database Helpsheets)
• Limit your search to full text articles (Guide to Databases)
• Set up alerts for the latest information (Guide to Sirius)
• Use My Space (Guide to Sirius)
• Access services for distance students (Services for Off Campus Students)
• Find information on statistical or legal aspects of your subject

Worked example

For the purpose of research the key ideas in the question are

• 'team concept'
• 'self-directed' teams (also known as 'self-managing' teams)
• management

For searching you could try using these terms:
Teams, team concept, self-directed, self-managing, management, organisation, organization, selfdirected, selfmanaging, self managing, self directed, business (TIP: you could exclude material on group assignments by using a Boolean expression “not education”)

Databases have individual rules for punctuation. For example, if a search with a hyphenated term, such as ‘self-managing’ does not succeed, try again with the term as a two words (‘self managing’), and with the term as one word (‘selfmanaging’). You will need to allow enough time to experiment with searching in different databases.

Search for scholarly books and textbooks

We start by searching the catalogue (LRD) for scholarly books (access the LRD from the UNSW Library’s Home Page). The screen below will appear. Type in your search term in the ‘search for’ box as below:

Click on ‘Find’ and a list of resources will appear.

Be flexible with your search, if your first attempt fails to produce any results, or produces too many results (this is very common if the search term is too broad) try something else.

Click on a title that looks relevant, for example:

When you click on the title as above, the ‘full record’ will appear (click here to see the full record - screen grab?). You will see that the subject heading for this book is ‘Teams in the workplace - Management’. This link will lead you to more books on the subject. Also consider adding the term ‘workplace’ to your list of possible search terms.

The books you find in the catalogue (LRD) will provide a useful overview, however for more specific information you will need to find some journal articles.

Search for scholarly journals

Journal articles are found in databases (some are also available in hard copy in the Library). To find the relevant databases for your topic area, look in the Library’s Subject Guides. Each major disciplinary area (such as Economics, Accounting, Finance etc) has a list of the relevant databases and journals for topics in that discipline. Alternatively, look for specific journals via Sirius.

For this example we will use the database Business Source Premier, which is a recommended database to find journal articles for the disciplinary area ‘Organisation and Management’.

When you open the database Business Source Premier (through the ‘Organisation and Management’ subject guide or via Sirius) the following screen will appear:

Type in the search term into the ‘find’ fields as above (by using a symbol such as *, you can find all forms of a word (eg ‘team*’ finds ‘team’ and ‘teams’ and ‘teaming’). For more information on techniques for making your search more effective check out the Guide to databases. In this and many databases, you can limit your search by a number of criteria (full text, academic journals, date range etc) in order to produce a more relevant set of results.

If your search results in not enough relevant material, try a different database and/or refine or change your search terms . If your search results in too much material, refine your search terms (see ‘Identify Search Terms’ above).

Search for industry and professional publications

You may still need some ‘non-academic’ material. You could try the following:

• repeat your search in Business Source Premier, limiting the search to ‘trade publications’
• look at references in your text book or in the course outline for references to industry and professional publications
• search the internet for the web pages of management organisations, e.g. Australian Institute of Management
• look for popular business journals on the web or at the newsagent

Practice activity

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