ECS Database Resources for INFO 2009 October 2011 Fiona
Nichols
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What information? High quality Up to date Relevant
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Three important questions... What information do you need?
Where should you look for it? How can you get hold of it?
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Where do you look for information? Google only Google &
Wikipedia WebCat Library Website & WebCat Specialist databases,
Library Website & WebCat
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Where should you look for information? Brigham Young Uni
library's videos http://www.youtube.com/user/hbllproducti
on#p/u/5/2ArIj236UHs http://www.youtube.com/user/hbllproducti
on#p/u/5/2ArIj236UHs
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Direct URL http://www.soton.ac.uk/library
http://www.soton.ac.uk/library Or via SUSSED Library Website
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try the Library Website! Go to either Subject Support or
Resources
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Focus on High quality subject specialist information sources
Techniques for searching Other electronic resources Exporting
citations and referencing Tutorials
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Quality Sources Specialist databases and Indexes Full text
sources Learned societies websites Gateways Journal providers
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Specialist Databases and Indexes up to date information from
peer reviewed publications such as journal articles, conference
proceedings, reports, books and theses well indexed enabling
detailed searching contain abstracts of the articles retrieved may
to link to full text where available
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but they dont cover everything. So Dont forget to check and see
what other resources are available from the subject support
pages
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Why would you use these databases? Because Google didnt work
Need a comprehensive survey of all the literature that has been
published worldwide Need to be able to access the full text/actual
articles to find out about new research the minute is has been
published Want to use resources available by just one
publisher
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How to access them From the library home page at:
www.soton.ac.uk/library ECS subject pages Resources page Using
Institutional login or VPN when off campus
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Library Website and then, choose Physical and Applied Sciences,
followed by Electronics and Computer Science Select the Subject
Support Tab...
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Then select the relevant links
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Specialist databases & Indexes Web of Knowledge INSPEC
Compendex High quality, academic world-wide coverage
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Key databases ISI Web of Science General science database
Citation searching INSPEC Compendex Specialist Computing.
Scientific and Engineering Databases
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Web of Knowledge Wide coverage of scientific sources Databases
can be searched individually or together Main databases of
relevance to ECS Inspec (controlled vocabulary) Web of Science
(citation searching) ISI Proceedings
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Use Select a database tab for full details of the databases
available on the Web of Knowledge Platform
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Compendex Mainly engineering and physical sciences Searchable
using a controlled vocabulary (Thesaurus) But does NOT give the
full text!
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Online help and tutorials Remember tutorials to many of the
librarys resources and services can be found at :-
http://www.soton.ac.uk/library/infoskills /tutorials.html
http://www.soton.ac.uk/library/infoskills /tutorials.html
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Copyright it does matter!
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Access Institutional Login iSolutions username/password VPN
check iSolutions site for details
Devise a search strategy Look at your own search statement or
project topic and devise a search strategy by selecting relevant
keywords or concepts Break down topic into components Identify
keywords, synonyms, alternative spellings & related terms List
relevant headings Then put the search strategy into practice in the
different databases and compare the results
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Anatomy of a literature search Identify resources that cover
your study topic Create a search strategy Conduct a search using
search operators (i.e. AND, OR and NOT) Check results for relevance
Changes to search strategy needed? From library resources, obtain
the items to read
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How to search the databases Topic search keywords or phrases
Author/title search By journal/conference title Etc etc
Searching techniques (1) Search statements retrieve exact
matches Use Boolean operators (and,or,not) to combine search
terms
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Searching Boolean logic AND, OR, NOT Symbols vary e.g. optic*
Enclose in quotes black body radiation Truncation and wildcards
Phrase searching
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Searching techniques (2) Use truncation, stemming and wild
cards (symbols vary between databases) Phrase searching Think
carefully about what terms to use and how to enter them
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Truncation Finds words with a common stem (normally * symbol, $
in WebCat / Medline) comput* will find: computer computers
computing computational
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Wildcards Replace a single character (normally ? symbol) Wom?n
will find both woman and women Engine? will find both engine and
engines but not engineering Colo?r will find both colour and
color
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Phrase Searching Some databases search for a phrase if Boolean
operators are not present Others require phrases to be enclosed in
quotation marks Note that truncation and stemming do not always
work with phrase searching
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Truncation Question here
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Examples of combining search terms and using truncations
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Same search, different database
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So... Decide on the exact form of the terms you will use Allow
for any relevant variations in terminology and spelling Use
truncation and wildcard symbols where appropriate
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Finding the documents Direct links from databases TDNet
electronic (and print) journal holdings links from Library web page
and from most databases WebCat print and electronic holdings of
books, journals, conferences reports and theses
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Exceptions Items not individually catalogued Patents/ BSI/IEC
standards IET/IEEE conferences and standards (IEEEXplore) Items not
in UoS Libraries Inter Library Loan (ILL) Free material e.g. NASA
Technical Reports
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Describe and/or demo
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Web of Knowledge hosts a number of databases: Web of Science
Medline INSPEC Journal Citation Reports
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Use Select a database tab for full details of the databases
available on the Web of Knowledge Platform
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Web of Science Good for citation searching Has a useful
citation linking feature
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Web of Science has a useful citation linking feature Click here
to see all citing articles
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These articles all cite the parent article TD-Net link
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Following the full text link through TDNet
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If there is no (online) full text follow the Catalog link if
present or check WebCat directly
Controlled (Thesaurus) terms Terms added to a record taken from
a fixed list (thesaurus) Searching these makes results more
relevant by avoiding concepts mentioned in passing retrieving
material containing alternative terms
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Saved Searches Search history Saving searches Alerts
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Select Search History to save a search or create an alert
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To save searches and create alerts set up an account
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Full Text Resources
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Key Full text Resources IEEEXplore ACM Digital Library LNCS
lecture Notes in computer science Individual items not linked from
TDNet
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Full text key resources - Select any of these full text
resources
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Scroll down for more...
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66 Finding information on the web
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danardvincente/2512148775/http://www.flickr.com/photos/danardvincente/2512148775/
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Internet Searching There are some good search engines Google
Scholar and many high quality websites and gateways Intute but many
websites have no quality controls and need careful evaluation so
one of the best internet resources for you is
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Internet search engines There are some good search engines
Google Scholar (general academic) Scirus (scientific information)
OAIster ArXiv But remember that you still need to evaluate what you
find
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Specialist search engines High quality websites Full text
sources Scirus Google Scholar OAIster ArXiv
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these services can also be accessed from the subject pages
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E-print servers The information is free and usually full text
They contain the very latest research and ideas There is no delay
in publication Institutional repositories may contain data and
other information too
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But Many have not been peer reviewed They may contain
inaccurate or poor quality material As long as you are aware of the
potential drawbacks they are a valuable resource
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Recording your results Mark relevant references in your search
results Then E-mail results to yourself Export to reference
software Save to a file
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Recording references for your bibliography Record the full
details of the reference Record how you found it
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When I finish a search what happens to it? Delete it Lose it
Save it if wish Export it if wish
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Further Help Enquiry points in the library Fiona Nichols -
[email protected]@soton.ac.uk -
[email protected]@soton.ac.uk The library website
www.southampton.ac.uk/library www.southampton.ac.uk/library
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Did you feel that using the zappers has helped your learning
experience? Yes No Why??????