Looking for information on a
topic
Choose your own adventure!
You’ve got less than a week to
research and write an assignment on
urban poverty in Asia.
We are going to explore our
(www.elibrary.bham.ac.uk)
to access and search resources
Once in eLibrary you have a few
options - do you?
1)
In the ‘Find eJournal’ section, search for e-journal titles
2)
In the ‘Subject Search’ section, select the ‘Public Policy’
category, then the ‘Urban & Regional Studies’ subcategory, ready to select some resources for crosssearching
3)
In the ‘Find Resource’ section, select the ‘Public Policy’
category, then the ‘Urban & Regional Studies’ subcategory, click on ‘Go’ and access certain resources
directly
To locate some useful journal articles
from the ‘Find eJournal’ section, do
you?
1) Search for e-journal titles
containing the words ‘urban’ or
‘poverty’
2) Search for the International
journal of urban and regional
research then access it via
IngentaConnect to browse its
contents pages
Using the ‘Find eJournal’ section in
this way is definitely not the best way
to find out about the content of
journals. There may be many journal
articles relevant to your topic, but what
are the chances of them all appearing
within journal titles containing the
words ‘urban’ or ‘poverty’? You will
miss out on a lot of useful resources
by searching in this way.
Click here to start again
Although this journal will almost
certainly have some useful information
somewhere, browsing for it is not the
best way, because:
- it is time consuming
- there is no guarantee that this journal
will contain the best article on this topic
Although you can
extend your search
across all Ingenta
journals this is
limited as Ingenta
may not include the
most relevant
journals - so you
won’t find the most
relevant articles. It
would be better to
search a relevant
database in this
subject area
Click here to start again
You are ready to select some resources
for cross-searching. Do you?
1) Click on the ‘i’ (information) icons
alongside each resource in the list to
identify the most relevant resources for
this topic and then select those
2) Select all of the resources in the list that
have tick-boxes alongside them- that
way you’ll pick up everything
Reading the information from the ‘i’
icons is a good way of selecting the
most relevant resources for your
particular topic and eliminating those
that are not suitable. Now in terms of
your search terms, do you?
1) Using the ‘Advanced search’ option, search
using the words:
urban poverty OR Asia
2) Using the ‘Advanced search’ option, search
using the words:
(urban poverty OR urban poor) AND asia
Searching for urban poverty OR Asia
will retrieve references to articles on
urban poverty or on Asia. You need to
construct a search that finds articles
where both urban poverty and Asia
are discussed. You may need to learn
more about how to construct an
effective search- have a look at the
following guide:
www.is.bham.ac.uk/ppm/publications/skills/sk10effect
ivesearching.pdf
To improve your search techniques it is
worth considering the pros and cons of
cross-searching a number of databases:
-Quick
- Covers a range of resources
- All resources listed on eLibrary
are of high academic quality
- Relatively limited search options
compared to that of individual
databases (eg field searching and
thesaurus etc)
- Not all databases in eLibrary are
cross-searchable (so you may be
missing key articles / resources)
To access these you will need to go to
the resource itself.
Having carried out a cross-search
do you now wish to?
1) Return to the cross-searching
option and try again in the light of
your newly-acquired knowledge
and skills
2) Return to the very beginning to
start again
Searching using the words:
(urban poverty OR urban poor) AND asia
shows that you are combining your keywords
correctly.
This search will retrieve references relevant to
both urban poverty (or urban poor) and Asia
(or Asian/ Asians)
To improve your search techniques it is
worth considering the pros and cons of
cross-searching a number of databases:
- Quick
- Covers a range of resources in one go.
- All resources listed on eLibrary are of high
academic quality (compared to what you
would get from a search on Google)
- Relatively limited search options compared
to that of individual databases (eg field
searching and thesaurus etc)
- Not all databases in eLibrary are crosssearchable (so you may be missing key
articles / resources)
To access these you will need to go to the
resource itself.
With your list of results do you?
1) Assume that you can access the
electronic full-text of each of the resulting
references
2) Use the ‘Find It! Bham’ icon to check to
see if the University subscribes to the
electronic full-text
It is important to realise that
your list of results are at this
stage simply references to
journal articles (and other types
of publication), not the full-text,
which the University may or
may not subscribe to
electronically.
Click here to start again
Clicking on the ‘Find It! Bham’ icon checks to
see if the University subscribes to the
electronic full-text of the reference. The box
that opens up may present you with a range
of different options - click on any ‘Go’ icons
to try to access the full-text. Remember that
you may need the proxy server to access
the full-text of e-journals off-campus (see the
‘IS Proxy’ link at the bottom of every page in
eLibrary for further details).
If the electronic fulltext isn’t available at
the University, click
on:
‘Click here for further
options’ This will tell
you if we hold a print
copy of the journal.
Click here to start again
It would be better to read the
information icons
next to resources
to find out which are most relevant
(after a while you will know!) so you are
not wading through hundreds of results.
Also note that you can only crosssearch 10 databases at a time – so
make them the most relevant ones and
you will only have to search once!
To improve your search techniques it is
worth considering the pros and cons of
cross-searching a number of databases:
- Quick
- Covers a range of resources in one go.
- All resources listed on eLibrary are of high
academic quality (compared to what you
would get from a search on Google)
- Relatively limited search options compared
to that of individual databases (eg field
searching and thesaurus etc)
- Not all databases in eLibrary are crosssearchable (so you may be missing key
articles / resources)
To access these you will need to go to the
resource itself.
In the light of this newly-acquired
knowledge do you wish to?
1) Return to the cross-searching
option and try again
2) Return to the very beginning to start
again
If you scroll
through the list
you can choose
the Social
Science Citation
Index, part of
Web of Science
(on the Web of
Knowledge
platform) – this
is a key resource
for many social
sciences.
This finds 39 results, all with Findit@bham links
back to our electronic journals on elibrary
Carrying out searches in the native
interfaces of databases has some very
strong advantages:
- Quality results. You will be searching
high-quality resources, suitable for
academic use.
- You can conduct more sophisticated
searches within the native interfaces of
many databases.
Obviously this route is not the best one to take as a starting
point if you are looking for introductory information on a
topic – in which case you are advised to do a quick crosssearch!
But if you have more time and want too be comprehensive
and find the most relevant articles, you are advised to
search the key databases for your subject and use their
native interfaces to construct a quality search.
To find out more about the most relevant databases for
your subject area, look at your subject guide:
http://www.is.bham.ac.uk/ppm/publications/
Click here to start again