Information LiteracyGeography 2nd Years GG2038

Ronan Madden Arts & Humanities Librarian

1. Basics: Library website, catalogue, off-campus access

2. Journals and e-journals: what they are, how to source a journal article

3. Resource discovery using electronic databases: full-text and bibliographic

4. How to use the web more effectively e.g. advanced searching, Google Scholar, etc.

5. Quality control: critically appraising your information sources

Topics

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Geography in the Boole Library

• Read: Geography handout (see Subject Guide)

• Books for Geography shelved on Q+1, Q+2, Q+3 N.B. check the Library catalogue for location

• Dewey decimal: class numbers are assigned based on subject content of book/journal

• Official Pubs. & Euro. Docs.: on Q+2 floor

• Maps (mostly in Special Collections Q-1)

• Open Reserve (4-hour loan)

Library Web Site

N.B.

•Catalogue•Journal Portal•Databases A-Z•Searcher•Subject Guides•How do I?•Study & Research Help

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Subject Guide

• Starting point for relevant library & web material

- databases- journals- websites

• See Geography Subject Portal

Catalogue: Tips

• Title searches: word-perfect• Keyword searches: you can ‘modify

search’ e.g. material type ‘Video/DVD’• Consider synonyms, American spellings• Use the ‘bag’ to export records• Use ‘Worldcat’ link to search beyond UCC• Use ‘My Library Account’ to request

books on loan, to see your reading history, to access e-resources from home, and to save ‘lists’ of books

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Off-Campus Access

• Use ‘My Library Account’(like when renewing or requesting books)

• Name + student number + six digit password (alpha-numeric)

• N.B. You should access e-resources through the Library web pages so that the ‘Your Library Record’ screen will appear

• Contact Information desk on Q floor for queries e.g. forgotten password

• See: Learn about Pin NumbersRonan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

What if an item is not in UCC Library?

• Google it: book/article title or author and you may be lucky

• Inter-library loanSee: Inter-library loans service

• Visit other libraries: ‘Cork PAL’ Or ‘Letter of Introduction’ .Check with customer services in Boole Library

See: Accessing other librariesRonan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Journals

• Serials/Periodicals: published continuously• New research, cutting-edge• Print and/or electronic (30,000+ e-journals

in UCC)• ‘Peer-reviewed’/‘refereed’ =academic

journals‘The process by which an academic journal passes a paper submitted for publication to independent experts for comments on it’s suitability and worth; refereeing’

• Quality control: Papers accepted/rejected based on contribution to the field/new ideas, bias/conflicts of interest, suitability for journal etc.

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

• Popular Magazines: (articles written by journalists)

- Newspapers

- Substantive news e.g. ‘The Economist’, ‘National Geographic’, ‘New Scientist’,- Journal of opinion e.g. ‘Magill’, ‘Phoenix’- Magazines e.g. ‘Vogue’, ‘Readers Digest, etc.

• Trade Journals (specific industry, enable practitioners share market and product information within an industry) e.g. ‘Macworld’, ‘Restaurant Business’, ‘Chemical Week’. ‘Beverage World’

Other Periodicals

Finding a Journal Article

Example:

Bourne, L. (2007) ‘Understanding change in cities: a personal research path’. Canadian Geographer, 51(2):121-138

• Check the Journals Portal first

• See online tutorial: ‘Learn how to find the full-text of a journal article’ on the ‘Study & Research Help’ page

What are Databases? 1.

• Collections of logically related data, designed to meet information needs of one or more users e.g. library catalogue

• A bibliographic/research database: usually an electronic index to journal articles and books, containing citations & abstracts. Sometimes information about conference proceedings, theses, and other information formats is also included.

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

What are Databases? 2.

• Sometimes the full text of the articles is included, or links to the full text.

• Some are indexing and abstracting only: i.e. metadata – not necessarily a link to the full text.

• Some are general e.g. Web of Science, others are more subject-specific e.g. Medline, RILM.

• Essential for literature searches. • Other types of databases: ARTstor for

images, Music Online for streaming music, ACLS & Ebrary for e-booksRonan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

How are Databases Organised?

• Records: one record for each article, book etc.

• A field is the basic unit of entry in a record• Journal article fields might include:

- Title, Author, Keywords, Source, Publication Year, Abstract etc.

• For each record (e.g. article) added to the database, these fields must be included, and data is entered in that format.

• Searches of the databases can be narrowed to one or more fields: e.g. Author, Title, Author + Keyword, Keyword + Publication Year etc.

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Search Skills

college OR university

poverty AND crime

Boolean Operators: AND, OR

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Search Skills

cats NOT dogs

Boolean Operator: NOT

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Some Youtube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tm-sDKCnO4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1LpTbzSKd0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsSZps3NH-Mhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vube-ZcJFk4

Search Skills

• migration AND women• (migration OR emigration OR immigration)

AND women • (migration OR emigration OR immigration)

AND (women OR woman OR gender OR feminin* OR female)

_____________________________________________

• “human geography”• “global warming”_____________________________________________

• emigration NOT (Ireland OR Irish)

How to Find Relevant Databases

• Subject Guide: Geography• Databases A-Z: (See ‘Search the Library’)

Drop-down menu ‘Browse databases by Subject area’.Use ‘Geography’ list as a starting point only. Depending on your topic, you may need to search other lists e.g. - Sociology – Law - Government- Science - Humanities

• See online tutorial: Find the best databases for your assignments and research on the ‘Study & Research Help’ page

Where to Start (1)

For Geography start with:

• Academic Search Complete (not all full-text)• JSTOR • Wilson Omnifile (not all full-text)• Wiley Interscience• Sage journals• Taylor & Francis• Science Direct• PION (Environment & Planning) journals

And also: Springerlink, Oxford journals, DOAJ, Project Muse, Cambridge journals etc.

[All on the Databases A-Z: See ‘Search the Library’]

Where to Start (2)

Also try (not all full-text): ABI-Inform, Business Source Premier, Econlit, EI Compendex (engineering), Annual Reviews, Socindex, Africa Development Indicators, Columbia International Affairs

[All on the Databases A-Z]

Also of interest:• MIDA (Marine Irish Digital Atlas)• Nature Journals Online• Scientific American Archive• Science Online

[All on the Databases A-Z]

Databases without full-text

• Indexing and abstracting databases• Metadata – descriptive information i.e. not

necessarily a link to the full text • Full-text might be available in UCC through

another database/resource• Check the Journals Portal to find out (or

Searcher)• You should use as many databases as

possible for a thorough literature search (don’t ignore something important just because full-text not readily available)

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Bibliographic Databases/Indexes

• Try using:

- OCLC (incl. Worldcat, Articlefirst)- Web of Knowledge- Geoscienceworld (incl. Georef)- British Humanities Index- ASSIA (Social Sciences Collection)

[All on the Databases A-Z]

Same applies to many of the references you might find through Google Scholar!

Resources for Law & Official Publications

Official Publications:Source OECD, World Development Indicators, Eur-Lex, Parlianet, United Nations Treaty Series, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers etc. [see Government Databases]

Law: BAILII, Lexis Nexis, Westlaw, Current Legal Information, HEIN online, JUSTcite, JUSTIS, MOML, ‘Northern Ireland: a Divided Community’ etc. [see Law Databases and Law Subject Portal]

Getting Started

Example:

Urbanisation and the family in Ireland

Keywords:

urbanisation, urbanization, “urban development”, family, familial, kinship, Ireland, Irish Also maybe: “rural depopulation”, “growth of cities” etc.

Use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), truncation etc. to create appropriate search strings and apply the search (or variations of the search) to all relevant resources

Getting Started 2.

• Initial reviews: identify broad problem area, potential research problem, theoretical background, relevant terminology (keywords and terms)

• Once approved, further searches to refine research problem and methodologies

‘Trawling’ and ‘Mining’

• There may be a number of strands to your lit search• Keep a record of all of resources searched, and the

search terms and strings that you applied• Keeps a record of all books/articles that you are

likely to need for your bibliography e.g. Endnote, Zotero

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Further Resources

[N.B. See also subject guides for links to free resources]

•Online Reference Resources: (alternative to Wikipedia) see: Reference Resources under ‘Search the Library’ N.B. Oxford Reference Online

•Online Newspapers: Irish Newspaper Archive,

Irish Times Digital Archive

•E-books: ACLS Humanities E-book (HEB), Ebrary

• Images: ARTstor and others: See Images pageRonan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

‘Searcher’ Federated Search

• Excellent starting point for research

• Some results will be from non-academic periodicals

• N.B. you should still individually search specific databases for a thorough literature review Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Searching the Web

• Web: 160 million websites? 40 billion pages?Indexed Web contains at least 14 billion pages

• Anyone can publish: quality control?• Google: uses ‘Pagerank’: index/database of web

pages, Google compiles from sites found by it’s spider programs. They send full text of sites to the Google index. Pagerank retrieves results based on word occurrence, proximity, location on page, links to the page, traffic etc. about 100-200 ‘ingredients’. For the most part a keyword search. See here for more

• Problem: finding relevant scholarly material (also: doesn’t search the ‘deep web’). Quality and Quantity

Use Advanced Search

• Won’t guarantee that you find quality web sites, but may help you to control the sheer quantity of results.

• Example: You have an essay to write on the role that religion plays in the lives of Irish people who have emigrated

• Things to consider: word order, choice of words, ‘stop words’, domain search, operators, phrase search

• See: www.googleguide.com

Use Google Books & Google Scholar

Google Scholar: searches web for scholarly books & journals only. See: http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html

•an academic/scholarly journal is ‘peer-reviewed’: papers are written by researchers & reviewed by other experts - papers accepted/rejected based on their contribution to the subject area. Should be no bias. Magazines are not peer-reviewed – articles written by journalists•on campus more likely to gain access to the full text - off-campus you should ensure that you log in to your Library account first.

With Google, remember:

• Use Google scholar advanced search to improve quality and quantity of results

• Works better on-campus, or from home through the Databases A-Z

• If no full text, check the journal portal and the Library catalogue as usual

• See email alerts on Google Scholar• See tutorial:

Search the Web More Effectively for your Assignments and Research.

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Information Quality

• Fundamental to developing a literature review that will be a solid foundation on which you can build quality research and assignments

• See ‘Learn how to Evaluate information for your assignments and research on the ‘Study & Research Help’ page

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Evaluate your Information Sources

• Scholarly: aimed at those working within a field of study, disseminate research, scholarly methods are used, valid and trustworthy. These resources tend to be factual, methodical, scientific, based on clearly referenced sources and documentation

• Popular: aimed at wider public/mass audience, to entertain, inform, promote viewpoints, sell products and services. These resources tend to be subjective, journalistic, based on personal accounts/impressions and opinion.

• Look for clues based on the 12-point list‘Learn how to…evaluate information for your assignments’

• See also ‘Internet Detective’

A Word on Wikipedia

• ‘Wiki’: can be edited by anyone with permissions; Wikipedia is completely open, ANYONE can edit ANYTHING (within reason). Can’t rely on this information - you should not reference in assignments.

• But…can be useful for ‘getting your head around’ something i.e. background information, understanding a word/concept and for finding relevant keywords for your search 

• See: Researching with Wikipedia

• We recommend that you use Library reference resources listed here

EndNote TrainingFurther details available under the Study & Research link

Future class dates be posted on Library Homepage

To book: email r.bradfield@ucc.ie

Ronan Madden Info Lit 2012/13

Slideshare

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