Transcript 4 Literature search techniques 2 Strategic searching

Literature Search Techniques 2
Strategic searching
In
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this lecture you will learn:
The function of a literature search
The structure of academic literature
Revision of the previous lecture
An overview of search strategies
1. The function of a literature
search
What is the Purpose of a Literature
Search/Review? (1: Cognitive)
To avoid reinventing the wheel
To find out what other scholars are writing
about your topic
To learn methods and approaches that are
appropriate for your study
To learn appropriate theory to underpin your
work
What is the purpose of a Literature
Search/Review? (2: social)
 To demonstrate to your audience that your
contribution is new – different from everyone else’s
– Nobody will believe you unless you can demonstrate
through the literature review that you know what everyone
else has done
 In an MSc: to demonstrate to your teachers that you
can do an effective literature review
 Because literature reviews are an accepted part of
university projects/research and your project will not
look like a good project without one
What Information Should You Look
For?
 Publications that cover the same or a similar topic to
yours
 Publications that support your methods
– E.g. Stats, Systems Analysis, Database Normalisation,
Project Management, OO programming
 Background information books
– E.g. The Web, The JAVA programming language, electronic
security
2. The structure of academic
literature
Overall Structure
Research Topic
Specialist sub-area
Relevant
Primary
research
Your research question
Advanced literature search
Topic 1
5%
10%
Specialist area
5%
50%
5%
Topic 3
10%
10%
5%
Topic 2
A
field
structure
3. Revision of the previous lecture
Sources for Literature Reviews
 The Library
– Look through the list of journals and browse the books on
the shelves to find relevant ones
 Digital Libraries
– Need to use keyword searches to identify relevant articles
 The Web
– Use keyword searches in Google (which indexes PDF and
PostScript academic publications)
The Strengths and Weaknesses of
the Different Sources
 Books vs. journal articles vs conference proceedings
vs. the web
 Which tend to be the best for
– Currency
– Authority
– Understandability?
 Which types of task would each source be best for?
 Academic papers are quality controlled – many are
rejected as being incorrect or uninteresting
Literature search techniques
 Keyword search
– To find topically relevant information from digital libraries,
databases, or the web
– Good in most cases
 Browsing
– To sift through collections of potentially relevant text
– Good where there are many relevant books/articles, but
only a few can be selected
 Chaining
– Tracking references and citations to find articles relevant to
a topic
– Good where the topic is very small
Example: search engines
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Look for web page on search engines: read page
Look for book on search engines: read introduction,
contents list, look for subtopic
Start keyword searching for subtopic in digital
libraries
Chain key authors and papers for subtopic
Read the likely papers and pick one as your main
paper
Exercise
[Class vote on answers]
4. Overview of search strategies
Literature search strategy
Literature search -real?
Alternative literature search
strategy
A practical strategy?
– Do general searches until you find a paper that you
think you could understand & use it as the basis for
your research
– Author/reference/citation chain from this paper
– Keyword searches to get papers relevant to
subtopic
Alternative literature search
strategy
Your progress
The following should occur as you progress
– Increase in knowledge of the subject
– Increase in general knowledge of the specialist
topic
– Increase in your specialist vocabulary
– Increase in confidence that you can complete the
task
Homework Task
 Conduct a literature search for your chosen sub-area
for the second assessment
 Report
– The searches conducted (digital libraries, OPAC etc)
– The titles found from each search
 Discuss which types of publication (books, journal
articles, Web, conference papers) should be used to
give the different types of information needed
 Make a list of problems/issues that arose with your
search
 You do not need to print out all the articles you found