Beyond the Reading List - Information Sources and Searching Strategies

I was walking with PK yesterday and he told me that that the Academic Language and Learning (ALL) Unit has some great links to online resources like reading and note-taking, writing assignments and citing and referencing.

These guides will be great when I actually get to doing assignments but I am still trying to work out what are the best sources to use to find the information that I need. PK explained that in addition to the reading lists, he uses a variety of additional information resources such as encyclopaedias, textbooks, journal articles, government publications, conference papers etc.

But where do I start? The reading list does not have all the material I need, and the catalogue returns heaps of results when I do a keyword search on my assignment topic.

I approached one of the librarians and asked for help with locating more information on my assignment question. He pointed out that different information sources were valuable for different requirements - like encyclopaedias, subject dictionaries and other reference books are good for definitions and a very basic overview of my topic. Books are good for a more comprehensive view, presenting exisiting theories on topics. Journals and the web are useful for more current information.

Check out my unofficial table for selecting information sources:

• If you need very current information...
  Newspapers, recent journals and the the Internet are good choices.
  
• If you want general information...
  Dictionaries, encyclopaedia (electronic or print), or textbooks provide basic definitions and general overviews.
  
• If you want scholarly information...
  Consult library catalogues and databases for books and journals written by 'experts in the field', sources that have been referreed/evaluated by other experts before publication.
  
  Aside from this overview of sources, the librarian showed me how to select and combine relevant subject terms and perform different types of searches to find a variety of information resources on my topic. He also showed me a handout that they have in the Library on developing search strategies and this was very useful, so I thought I would note some of the key points, so that I can use them again for my next assignment.

Developing a Search Strategy

A search strategy is a plan outlining how you are going to search for information. There are three basic steps in building a search strategy:

1. Identify key concepts:
• Break down the question into parts or concepts
  
2. Find alternative terms for the main concepts:
• Synonyms (e.g. university, college, tertiary)
• Plural/singular forms (e.g. woman, women)
• Spelling variations, American vs Australian spelling (e.g. behavior, behaviour)
• Truncation - covers variations of a root word (e.g. computer, computers, computing, computerised). Use the relevant truncation symbol to search on all the variations (e.g. comput*)
• Acronyms (abbreviations, e.g. chief executive officer, CEO)
  
3. Apply Boolean logic to search terms:
• Boolean operators are: AND, OR, NOT.

Note to self: When I do my searches in the catalogue and databases, I must check the Help pages in each to find out which truncation symbol to use as they can be different in different databases - it is usually either * or ?, but it can even be !

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