NOVEMBER 2013
ISSUE 4
Study Skills Newsletter: finding
resources and literature searching
Contents
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Welcome
Where to look for resources
Using databases
Next Steps: Your Literature Search
Saving your search
Disadvantages of using Google
Scholar
Further help & support
HSMC Library Catalogue
Also known as Heritage – you can use
this to search for items held at Park
House as well as link through to
electronic resources
Welcome
Welcome to the fourth in a series of
newsletters produced by HSMC library
staff on the topic of study skills. This is a
general guide so if you are unsure of
anything please check with staff.
Before you read further you might want to
look at our Literature Searching help
pages, which includes help with building
an effective search strategy and a useful
FAQ section:
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/hsmclibrary/help-and-training/literaturesearching.aspx
We also have a selection of books in the
library – including titles from the Pocket
Study Skills and Palgrave Study Skills
series. Remember we are happy to post
these out to you.
Some tips:
Only interested in a certain medium
type? Click on the media type box for a
drop down box and select book,
dissertation, e-book etc
Want to renew or reserve items from
home? Just enter your reader code (this
can be found on the front of your library
card – see below) in the log in box on
the right hand of the screen.
Where to look for resources
There are a number of places you can
search for items – including books,
articles or e-books.
Enter the number from your library card to
renew or reserve items – e.g. 00006447
FindIt @Bham
Described as the “one stop shop search system for the library”. Findit allows you to search and
discover print and audiovisual material, e-journals, e-books and databases as well as journal
articles.
There are a number of ways you can search for items – if you want to narrow your search down
it’s worth using either an advanced search or searching by medium type, especially if you have
a particular title in mind.
For example if you were to type “the new politics of the NHS” into the search everything box
you would be presented with the following (3,354 hits)
However, typing the same phrase (using the advanced search) in the title field would bring up
just 17 hits
You can also search by medium type – using the same example and searching for physical
items only this would produce just 2 results
How to access the databases
Choose find databases (see below)
Don’t forget to sign in – this allows you to
access a full range of resources, including
many articles that the University subscribes
to.
Using other libraries
If you live away from Birmingham you may
want to join the SCONUL Access scheme
(see http://www.sconul.ac.uk/sconul-access
for details) – this allows you to borrow or use
books and journals at other libraries which
belong to the scheme.
Using Databases
You can then search by the name of the
database or search by subject.
The database(s) you decide to use for your
search will depend largely the subjects you
are looking at – here are just a few of the
databases we subscribe to relating to Health
Services Management & Policy (the text in
Italics denotes their subject coverage)
CINAHL
For nursing and allied health professionals,
students and researchers.
EMBASE
A biomedical and pharmaceutical database,
indexing 3,500 plus international journals and
covering drug research, public health,
forensic medicine and more
HMIC
Holds abstracts from the King’s Fund, DoH,
Nuffield and relates to UK health policy and
management
Social Care Online
A portal to the UKs largest collection of
information on social work and social care
A full list can be found at
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/hsmclibrary/library-resources/databases.aspx
A full list of databases on Health Services
Management & Policy can be found by
choosing the search by subject tab>social
policy>health services management.
Just click on the title of the database you
wish to search and sign in.
Lost your Username/Password?
Contact the IT helpdesk on 0121 414
7171
Next Steps: Your Literature Search
Whilst knowing where to look for your
resources is important, knowing how to
search for items is just as crucial. In the
next section we’ll look at how you can
ensure that you are going to retrieve the
most relevant results and how to build a
robust search strategy.
a) Formulate your question - decide on
your research question in your own words.
For the next few sections we will be using
the following example:
“What is public opinion
on the ethics of health
care rationing in the
NHS”
b) Extract your keywords – what are the
individual subjects within your topic or
question?
Public
Opinion
Rationing
Ethics
NHS
c) Look for synonyms – these are words
with the same or similar meaning. It’s
important to look for these as authors often
use different words for the same subject
area. Including synonyms means that you
are less likely to miss potentially relevant
resources.
Public
opinion
Patient views,
Patient opinion
Public views
Etc etc
Ethics
Principles
Morals
Code
Can you think of synonyms for the other
keywords?
d) Use Boolean Operators – these are
simple words (AND, OR, NOT) used to
combine or exclude keywords and
synonyms. Using these can greatly reduce
the amount of records returned.
AND – allows you to combine keywords.
For example public opinion AND ethics
AND rationing AND NHS
OR – allows you to combine synonyms. For
example public opinion OR patient views
OR public views
NOT – allows you to exclude certain words.
Say, you wish to exclude a certain country
or specialism. For example NOT United
States or NOT children.
Often databases will give you the option to
combine searches and search terms Here’s how a search might look using
Boolean operators:
i
ii
iii
Next Steps: Your Literature Search
continued
i=
ii =
iii=
tick the boxes to select search
terms
including ‘or’ will combine
synonyms
combine searches with AND/OR
e) Truncation & Wildcard searching
Wildcards are a way of searching for
alternative spellings of the same word –
e.g. organization/organisation – adding a $
will capture both:
ORGANI$ATION=organization/organisation
Truncation is a way of finding all relevant
material by searching for words or phrases
with the same root – e.g.
ration/rationed/rationing – adding a * will
capture all of them
g) Snowballing
Increase your selection of keywords and
synonyms by finding the most relevant
articles and looking at what they used.
Databases such as Web of Science and
Google scholar, will also allow you to
examine the articles that cite this original
research, or the authors of the paper, as
these articles may be related.
Saving Your Search
Most databases will allow you to save your
search strategy and history by asking you
to create an account. Creating an account
will allow you to run the search again and
again.
You can also export citations (title, author,
abstract etc) to word or referencing
software systems like Mendeley and
RefWorks (for more details on this please
see our previous newsletter on
referencing).
RATION*=ration/rationed/rationing
f) Limiting your search – you can do this by
year, material type, language. Often
databases will prompt you – see below for
an example from the Web of Science
database – the circles indicate where you
can limit by medium type, date and
language
Saving your search is useful if you have a
lot of results and are planning to return to
your search and exporting citations means
you can read through your abstracts, pick
out key resources and generate
bibliographies in a formatted way.
Going directly to the full text – click on the
FindIt icon – this will take you through to
the full text
Disadvantages of using
Google Scholar
Of course you can also use Google Scholar
to find articles, reports – but before you do
it’s worth baring the following in mind.
X Google Scholar tends to hold a lot of
open access materials - the majority of
research materials/articles are hidden in
publishers' databases and journals so
won’t appear in the search results, or if
they do appear there will usually be some
kind of cost associated
X
The other issue is that not all search
results are always current or completely
accurate – and non-scholarly sources can
sometimes show up as a result.
X
Coverage is limited – larger amounts of
articles in science and technology and less
in the arts and humanities.
X
Google Scholar does not say where it
finds its sources, so you cannot have the
same confidence in its reliability as you
can when searching library sources.
X
It also limits the results of any search
to the 1000 most cited papers. This is
generally not a problem for author
searches as there are few authors who
have published more than 1000 papers, but
the upper limit can present problems for
journal searches as many journals will
have published more than 1000 papers
over their life-time.
There are advantages as well though and
certainly for students new to searching it
might be a better tool to use.
If you do use Google Scholar make sure
you are signed into FindIt first – as this will
allow you to click through to the full text of
articles.
Further help and Support
We offer online tutorials/virtual library
clinics
We are happy to offer one-to-one sessions
in the library
We hold a large collection of study skills
books
Our website can talk you through the
importance of literature searching and the
sorts of resources available to you
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the
latest study skills news
Twitter:
www.twitter.com/hsmc_library
Address:
HSMC Library & Information
Service,
Park House,
40 Edgbaston Park Road,
Birmingham,
B15 2RT
X It tends to have an American bias
Email:hsmc-