WISER Social Sciences: Electronic Resources for Research

Tuesday 16 January 2007

Judy Reading and Angela Carritt

Structure of today’s session

Presentation outlining useful search strategies and explaining where to look and what kinds of resources are available

Demonstration of a couple of databases to show how these strategies might work in practice

Time to explore with assistance available

OxLIP

• Oxford Library Information Platform – our gateway to electronic resources

• Subject and title index

Library catalogues including OLIS Bibliographic databases Full-text electronic journals Internet sites (subject gateways)

Accessing OxLIP

Access from any Oxford University computer

If access is needed from a non-University PC: Should be arranged before leaving Oxford Register for a personal Athens account If database does not use Athens contact OUCS

to arrange remote access to the Oxford University network

Where to start?

If you can find a couple of relevant books read those first to get a general idea of a new subject

Check your library’s reference section for handbooks which give succinct overviews of research in an area

Then spend some time thinking about the topic you are interested in – you may find a mind-map or spider diagram useful at various stages of your literature review as you can track progress of your ideas

Make sure you have a system for storing the references you identify – maybe use Endnote, Refworks or an old-fashioned card index

Book catalogues

Books can be located in library catalogues – of individual libraries and of consortia. Useful examples include OLIS, COPAC, British Library and Worldcat. See http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/oxlip/index.html

Also web services such as Amazon and Google.

Journals...

Journal indexes not usually connected to specific library collections (although sometimes full-text can be found)

Citation indexes allow tracking forward in time as well as backward eg Web of Knowledge

Tour link to full-text offered by increasing number of indexes

Use the Library catalogue to locate journal titles – don’t use article title

TD-Net is a catalogue of the full-text journal collection in Oxford

Contents pages services can keep you updated (TDNet and ZETOC)

Information on the internet

Can use services like Google which provide keyword searches – try several as will get different results – look at the advanced search options

Can use portals such as the Intute: Social Sciences gateway http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/

Can identify key organisations and look at their publications and their web-links

Important to evaluate information on the internet –

Provenance, Currency, Objectivity, Accuracy Could try Internet Detective Tutorial

http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/

Locating research Find and join mailing lists (see http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk) and

use directories to locate active organisations and individuals Ideas may be first expressed in conferences and recorded in

conference proceedings (Various sources of information for this – see OCLC Proceedings - also track down the web-sites of key organisations)

Original research is reported in dissertations (find listed in library catalogues, Dissertation abstracts (N.America) and Index to Theses (UK))

Research reports are being produced all the time and are often informally published as “grey literature” – these can be found through the internet and by finding out about key organisations and individuals

Tackling an unfamiliar database

Check the coverage of a database to see if it includes what you want

You can use cross-searching for some collections of databases to identify concentrations of useful references

Use the help screens provided – check the specific conventions (eg do they use &, +, or “and”)

Use any subject indexes provided Databases now often offer similar functions but you may

have to delve a bit to see how they do it compared with one you are familiar with

Keyword & subject searching

Keyword searching Searches for terms anywhere in the field or record Useful as a starting place but results can be less

relevant

Subject indexes Where possible tap into the subject headings or

thesauri provided by the databases

Combining search terms

Boolean logic Boolean connectors : AND, OR, NOT, NEAR AND to narrow the search OR to broaden the search (synonyms) Symbols for wildcards and truncation

? for a single character wom?n will find woman or women globali?ation will find British and American spelling

* for truncation or variant spellings politi* for politic, politics, political, politically etc.

OR, AND, NOT

Television

ObesityChildren

Evaluating search results

You may need to widen or focus your search depending on what you find

How relevant is it to you? May need to find relevance in related work.

Evaluate articles to establish how reliable the information contained e.g. is it based on research evidence – what sample size was used etc.

Important to evaluate for – Provenance, Currency, Objectivity, Accuracy Peer review process in publishing

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts

Collection of indexes including: ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts

Health, social services, economics, politics, race relations and education

Covers 16 countries including UK/USA 1987- Updated monthly

PAIS Public affairs and social policy 1972 -

ERIC: Educational Resources Information Center Education 1966- Updated monthly

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts

CSA Worldwide Political Science Abstracts Politics, international relations, law, public

administration / policy 1975-

Index Islamicus Islam, the Middle East and the Muslim world 1906- updated annually

National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Criminal / juvenile justice, and drug control Mainly US (some international)

Accessing CSA

Access from OxlipTo cross search across more than one

index choose Cambridge Scientific Abstracts

To search an individual index click on the name of the index

Database coverage, searching help etc

Choose Social Sciences to cross search the social sciences indexes on CSA. Alternatively choose a database(s) by clicking on “specific databases”.

Limit dates

Example of a boolean search in CSA:indigenous people* NEAR self NEAR (determination OR government)

Finds the phrase indigenous people(s) within 10 words of either the phrase self determination or the phrase self government

Look out for useful descriptors

Check boxes for useful articles

View record:•Abstract•Article bibliography•combine descriptors in a new search

Direct link to full text online

Sort – relevancy ranking can useful but check help to see how its done.

Choose from the tabs - do you want publications , scholars, website? Do you want peer reviewed only?

Alerts you when new items are added to the database which meet your criteria

DE= Subject heading

Keyword search searches Title, Abstract and descriptor

Use the drop down menu to choose boolean operators between the search fields (e.g. selfdetermination as a descriptor OR aborigin* as a keyword or selfdetermination as a descriptor AND aborigin* as a keyword).You can also use boolean operators within the search box if you wish.

International Bibliography of Social Sciences

Created by LSEInternational coverageEconomics, political science, sociology,

and anthropology 1951- Updated weeklyUses the “Ovid Platform” – Ovid makes a

number of indexing services available online

“i” button to check coverage information

To search follow the link or tick the check boxes for appropriate databases and then click continue

IBSS is hosted by OVID which hosts a number of indexing and full text databases

Use help to find out about search options

Combine search terms using•AND•OR •NOT•ADJn (n is a number of words) e.g. ADJ2 means the search terms must appear within 2 words of one another•If you do not use a boolean operator OVID will search for the phrase•$ to truncate

Keyword searches title, abstract, subject heading, geographic subject heading

More limits – limit by language, publication type, source

Access subject index

•Check appropriate articles. Then choose “Result manager” to set e-mail/save/print options

•Full record including author, title, document type, source, abstract, subject and country headings

•Oxford full text

Results

Example of complete referencere

•Look out for useful subject headings. They are not clickable so look for them in the subject index (choose “More fields” followed by “Subject” and paste in the relevant subject heading.)

Combine searches allows you to combine several searches using AND or OR

Save search – Saves the search so that you can run it again or set it as an e-mail alert to alert you when new materials are added to the database which meet your search criteria

Combining searches – read the hints

OR search gives you all the results returned by both searches in one batch

AND search gives you only the results which were returned by both searches

e.g. Combining searches

How to find the full text

TOUR links to the printed copy on OLIS online version where available not always available

When TOUR is not available use OLIS for printed copies TD Net for online copies

The best way to use TD Net is to enter the journal title in the quick search box or to browse the alphabetical list of journals.

NOTE:•Do not use acronyms •Enter the journal title not the article title

TD NET - http://tdnet.bodley.ox.ac.uk or follow links from OxlipIncludes most journals which are available online. There are a few exceptions, so if you can’t find a journal which you suspect is available online please check with your subject librarian

Example search “Economist”

Date coverage available online

CAUTION“Search TD NET” offers subject searching. However, this search is UNRELIABLE and returns incomplete results. It is better to use indexing and abstracting services in your subject area or general tools such as CSA or IBSS for subject and literature searching. TD Net should only be used to locate online copies of journal titles.