Introduction to resources

Useful things to make your (academic) life easier

Housekeeping

• How’s it going?• Can you find the books

on your reading lists?• Can you renew and

reserve books?• Do you know who to

contact for help?• Library Subject Guides?

Getting started

By tableatny (BXP135671) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Access from myUniHub > My Study page > My Library > Library Subject Guides

Hover your mouse over Resources to see pages on specific topics, e.g. Finding Journal Articles

Starting your search

Summon

Searches journals, books and more

Good starting point for a basic search

NOT specific to sport!

Doesn’t do specific or complex searching

Refine, refine, refine Full text online

Scholarly & peer review

Journal Articles only

Discipline,

e.g. recreation & sports

Date range

Levels of searching• Summon alone is not enough!• How deep / broad / careful do you need to be?

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Keywords• Really worth a 5 minute brainstorm before you search

– it will save you time later!

• Searching one word for your concept will not bring you all the results! And sometimes none.Not everyone uses the same terminology for one idea

• Can use the library worksheet if you like (also helps you organise how to combine the terms with ‘AND’ or ‘OR’)

• Examples follow

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Planning your search - keywords

Boring but WORTH IT!

1. Pick out your concepts and separate them – Concentration, performance, tennis etc

2. Think of other words that are similar to your key words but represent the same concepts– Attention control, focus, attentional

strategies etc

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Planning your search - keywords3. BE PREPARED

Think of narrower words that fit into your terms and wider concepts that your terms fit into.You will often need to:

A. widen your search by using larger terms or concepts to produce more results

OR

B. OR narrow your search if you produce too many results, by using narrower terms that fit into your concept

• NOTE: if you narrow or widen ALL your concepts you will make your life too hard – choose one or two

concentration

• Concentrat*• Attention• Focus• “Attention control

training”• “Attentional strategies”

Performance

• Ways of measuring performance

• Perform*

tennis• Racquet sports• Type of competition

What research has been conducted on improving concentration and performance in tennis players?

Specific egs

• Specific groups of athletes

•Age?

•Gender?

•Level – elite etc?

Over to you...

• Using the worksheet

• Briefly summarise your topic in the first box

• Narrow it down to some key words

• Swap with your neighbour – add some they haven’t thought of

AND / OR.....WHY?

...won’t find everything!

Estimated size of Google’s index

http://wallpapers5.com/wallpaper/Tip-of-the-Iceberg/

Google searches this bit...

http://wallpapers5.com/wallpaper/Tip-of-the-Iceberg/

http://wallpapers5.com/wallpaper/Tip-of-the-Iceberg/

The DEEP web

http://wallpapers5.com/wallpaper/Tip-of-the-Iceberg/

The DEEP web

•Intranets (internal internet sites)•Academic databases•Unlinked sites which haven’t told Google they exist, or have asked to remain unlisted•Basically, anything that needs a password

Avoid the filter bubble – sign out of Google when you search

More about the filter bubble

...is free and full of stuff!

Personalising Google Scholar• Did you know you can set up Google Scholar to link

to everything you have paid access to through the University?

• Please follow along and personalise your GS• Google Scholar > Settings

Personalising Google Scholar…

• Click on Library Links on left hand side

• Search for and select Middlesex University, then Save

Searching Google Scholar

Key databases for Sport

• Sport Discus

• Medline

• PsycInfo

• Science Citation Index

And more...

• Science Direct

• Ovid Journals • (includes the main S&C journals)

Sport Discus

• After a short demo...

• Try searching for some articles on your topic

• Use the ‘check for full text’ links

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Getting Full text of journal articles• Troubleshooting guide can be found here

– http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/accessingelectronicresources

• If you’re not lucky! REMEMBER – it won’t always be directly available to you – especially at MSc level– Double check the library catalogue by copying journal name into the ‘journal

search’. If we have it there’ll be a record and a link with the dates we have access to.

– Go to Google Scholar and look for PDF signs– Go to Author’s website/institution’s repository, often they have uploaded a

pre publication version– Order a copy via the inter-library loan service (£3.00) (usually you’ll be

emailed with a link to a PDF)http://unihub.mdx.ac.uk/study/library/resources/ill/index.aspx

Citation indexes

• Which articles have cited an earlier article• Find articles on similar/related subject• How many times an article has been cited• Best journals in your field

Science Citation Index

Google Scholar citations

Staying up to date in your area

• Most of the databases have an option to set up an account, so you can save searches and set up alerts or RSS feeds for new articles

Staying up to date in your area

Staying up to date – citation alerts• In Science Citation Index• For articles significant to your work/dissertation – get

an alert when it is cited in new research

Zetoc alerts service – get info as it’s published

• Access through myUniHub > Databases

Create an alert and name it

Add searches or journals that you want to bealerted about

• You can build a list of searches – by keywords or author

• You can also add searches by journal and be emailed every time a new issue is published

Exercise - Zetoc

• Access through MyUniHub > Databases

• Set up some alerts and add searches relevant to your modules / topics

• Remember you can add multiple searches for all of the synonyms to each alert

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Attribution

Referencing tools

• Cite Them Right

• RefWorks

• Mendeley

Shows you how to reference just about any source using Harvard referencing style

Other referencing styles e.g. APA are available for the main resource types

Access via MyUniHub / Subject guides

Online site to manage references, subscribed to by the University

Access through the Databases list on MyUniHub

Generate your references in many different styles – including journals

Help available on Subject Guides

Freely available software

Online and desktop versions

Store and annotate PDF files

Available to you after you’ve left MDX

Share references and notes with groups

Need help?

• Librarians in the Specialist Zone (1st floor of Sheppard Library) during core hours Mon-Fri

• Ask a Librarian http://askalibrarian.mdx.ac.uk/ • SES Library Subject Guide – Jo’s contact details and

presentations/helpsheetshttp://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/sport