Module B: Searching
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1. What is information literacy?
Information literacy is key to effective searching. The amount of information available online can sometimes seem overwhelming. The ability to identify reliable, high quality sources, and sift out unreliable data and fake news is called ‘information literacy’. In an increasingly online world information literacy is a valuable transferable skill which will help in your university studies, your future workplace and your everyday life. Being information literate means you are competent and confident in your ability to evaluate and use online sources and information.
- 2. What type of information are you required to find at university?
Studying at university differs from studying at school or college in three main respects:
- The range of sources you will be expected to use
- The volume of information you will need to work with
- The independence you will be expected to show when working with information you need for your course
The range of information sources you will be expected to use include:
- Library catalogues
- Print and electronic books
- Print and online journals
- Online databases
- Web search engines
So, where do you start? The short answer is - if you have a reading list, use the library catalogue to find the books or journal articles suggested. However, what if you need to search for information about a particular topic by yourself? In this module we will focus on finding information online, searching techniques and how to distinguish between reputable sources and fake news.
How do I start searching for literature on the Web?
A search strategy helps you clarify and focus your search, so that you are not overwhelmed with irrelevant results.
Step 1: Clarify your search topic
It can be useful to write down your search topic as a question or as a search statement. This can help you identify the key concepts of your search. Consider the following example of a search statement:
Discuss the impact of social media on mental health amongst teenagers.
The key concepts in this example are:
- social media
- mental health
- teenagers
Step 2. Think of synonyms
You can make your search more effective by thinking of similar words which can be used to express the same concepts. For example, the concept teenager can be expressed in a variety of ways including teen, young person, young adult, adolescents, adolescence etc. Be aware that academic literature often uses technical terms, rather than day-to-day language. Also, it can be useful to consider broader or narrower concepts to search for. E.g., consider searching for the term social media, if searching for specific examples (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.) does not provide you with useful results.
Here are some example keywords for the search statement above:
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SOCIAL MEDIA |
MENTAL HEALTH |
TEENAGERS |
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social network or networking or Instagram or Snapchat or Facebook or Twitter |
wellbeing or anxiety or depression |
adolescents or young people or young adults |
Step 3. Structuring your search
The final part of your search strategy is to decide how best to combine your keywords using the ‘AND’, ‘OR’ or ‘NOT’. This logic is used by library catalogues, search engines and databases and is sometimes referred to as ‘Boolean Logic’ (named after the mathematician George Boole). To search for a specific phrase, put the entire phrase within inverted commas.
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“social media” AND teenagers |
This search will only retrieve results which contain both terms - social media and teenagers - within a single source |
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“social media” OR “social networking” |
This search will find sources containing either the terms social media OR social networking |
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Twitter NOT Facebook |
This search will only return results that mention Twitter and it will specifically exclude any matches that mention Facebook. |
tep 4. Review your results
The final part of your search strategy is to have a look at the results of your search to see if they look useful. If your results do not look relevant, you may need to go back to step 2 and consider if there are different words which you can search for.
Even if your results look relevant to the search topic, you should check if they meet your other requirements. For example, the publication date will tell you whether a book or journal article is up-to-date, or possibly obsolete. Also, Article Search and many databases will offer options to filter your results by other criteria. If available, it can be a good idea to filter your results to include only articles from peer-reviewed journals. This will ensure that general, non-academic sources are excluded from your results.
If your search results are still not what you were hoping for, do not give up! A successful search will often take several attempts, and your subject librarian will also be happy to advise you on how to make your search strategy more effective, including providing guidance on subject specific databases.