The University of Queensland

Information Skills and Resources

Personalised Help — Using Databases — Reviewing the Literature — Different Tools for Different Purposes — Refining by Type — Search History — Controlled Vocabulary — Full-Text Databases — Cited-Reference Searching — Patents — Newspaper Articles — Legal Documents — Government Documents — Non-Government Reports — Statistics — Maps — Theses — Reference Tools — Searching the Internet — Keeping Up-to-Date — Document Delivery — Networking — Open Access — Analyse — Storing and Managing Your Search Results — Reflection — Going Home or Leaving University

Working through an information search on your topic or some aspect of your research with your liaison librarian is an effective way to build knowledge that will become intuitive, especially if you have a task about which you are unsure, or for which you have had unexpected results. Contact your Liaison Librarian.

For any of the points below your liaison librarian can provide further detail, clarification or problem-solving.

In 2008 students were asked:

Which search strategy would retrieve the most citations in an electronic database?

1. conservation OR environment
2. conservation AND environment
3. conservation NOT environment
4. conservation
5. environment

260 answered B,C,D or E. If you agree with those students, you do not understand standard operators used in databases. Have a look at our Database Searching How-to Guide.

The same techniques are usually available in Keyword searching in Library Catalogues.

In 2008 students were asked:

You are conducting a literature search for an essay topic. First you should:

1. Start with a basic search on the World Wide Web, using a search engine (e.g. Google).
2. Search for relevant text books which contain good background information or an overview of a subject.
3. Search journals for a review article of the literature in the particular subject area.
4. Search journals only for articles that are more up-to-date than information contained in books.
5. Conduct a wide search of journals.

302 answered A. If you agree, you are applying strategies that, while probably adequate for much basic undergraduate work, will fall short of your RHD needs.

It is quite easy these days to find some information on most topics – ‘ Google it!’

However some databases are designed to provide systematic answers about research across particular fields, as reflected in published science. You will have used some, but perhaps the distinctions between tools are not clear to you.

When you are preparing work that requires a comprehensive grasp of research on a specific topic, say, a literature review or a grant application, an answer from Google, or from electronic journals sites, may be incomplete.

Go to the Library Databases Gateway and click on Browse by subject. Have a look at the Key Resources at the top of the list of databases in your field.

Those in Key Resources are what are sometimes called ‘bibliographic’ databases (also sometimes ‘article’, ‘journal’, ‘indexing’, ‘abstracting’ databases, or just ‘indexes’ or ‘abstracts’). This type of database will index all journals in a defined field and will index selected articles from other journals. Each article will be indexed using fields such as: Author, Title and Subject Headings (see Controlled Vocabulary).

Some of these databases share a platform, for example Web of Knowledge or CSA Illumina, with shared search, browse, mark, download and full text linking features, though the databases themselves may still differ (e.g. descriptors will usually differ). Depending on your topic you may use several key databases on different platforms.

Look through the Full List of databases for your field. In addition to indexing databases you will find here databases of data (statistical, geographic, biodiversity and so on), and electronic journal sites (see Full-Text Databases).

Some databases will index books and proceedings. You may want to see only journal articles. Since indexers will label articles by publication type it is usually easy to refine your search to show only articles, or in some databases even peer-reviewed articles only. You can often use the same feature to limit results to review articles.

Indexing databases keep each search you do in a given search session. You can combine searches and recombine in different permutations using 'Search history' or 'History' options. This is a much more flexible base for refining searches than using multi-window search boxes or, in single windows, creating complicated 'nested' searches using parentheses. Begin by splitting your search question into separate concepts. Search one concept at a time (combining synonymous terms with OR). For more information on search techniques see the UQ Library How-to guide on Database Searching.

The UQ Library catalogue also allows you to keep a history of your preferred searches, provided you are logged in.

To search databases effectively, it is important to understand the concept of controlled vocabulary. Many databases use standardised topical or technical terms (descriptors or subject headings).

Unless you specifically select a field to search, such as article title, author etc, when you search a database you are searching the descriptors as well as article titles and abstracts.

You may need reference help (see Reference tools) or standard works to improve your keywords or you may need to find and use the database descriptors yourself. One easy way of doing so is to do a very specific search aimed to get highly relevant (but perhaps very few) results and then look carefully at how the best of these have been indexed. Restricting your search, or part of it, to a Title field search often helps. Then you can usually just click useful descriptors in the best records to initiate a search on that term, or copy and paste them into a search box.

Many databases, for eg. CSA Illumina, have a Thesaurus that you can use to look up descriptors or subject headings.

There are now very large databases which provide the full text of millions of journal articles and books. Some are produced by major journal publishers, such as ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Liebert Online, Wiley Interscience, Oxford Journals, Cambridge Journals. Some are produced by commercial aggregators using the product from different commercial publishers. Some, such as JSTOR and BioOne1, are non-profit and include journals from scientific societies.

Many of these full-text resources are also indexed in Scopus, Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar.

Because you are searching whole articles you need to make your searches as specific as possible. Use technical terms specific to your topic, or lots of keywords combined with AND, or specify bound phrases (see Database Searching How-to Guide), or search in specific fields only (Title or Author or both).

Referencing software can increasingly handle full text — see Storing and managing your search results

Another way of improving your results is to search by cited references. The principle is simple: if there is an article which is fundamental to your research topic, it may be helpful to find later publications which cite that article. Citation searching is becoming widely available in full text databases. The original citation searcher, Citation Search in the Web of Science databases, is still the best way to carry out a methodical citation search. Note also that the other databases on the Web of Knowledge platform allow linking through to citations in the Web of Science. See the UQ Library How-To Guide on Cited Reference Searching.

There is much technical information that is published only in Patents and it is suggested that no literature searching is complete without considering published patents from many countries. The most comprehensive patent database is Derwent Innovations Index. This database brings together the patents published in 41 countries. It succinctly summarizes in English the most important information in the patent and usually links to the full text of the patent. Derwent Innovations Index is linked to the Derwent Chemistry resource which allows chemical searching including chemical structure searching. A large proportion of chemical research is proprietary and published only in patents.

Researchers used to spend years of their lives laboriously scanning through newspapers in their microfilm or print formats. In some cases, this is still the only option.

Fortunately, most recently published newspaper articles can be searched via the web, although not always for free. Increasingly, older newspapers are also being digitised and turned into searchable databases, some of which are subscription-only resources, while others are available free online.

See the UQ Library How-To guide on News and Newspapers.

Your research may call for you to consult and refer to bills or legislation, either at the State or Federal level, or even at the international level. To trace the process and changes leading up to the new law being introduced you will need to consult readings and speeches made in Parliament (Hansard).

State, Commonwealth and international laws as well as treaties are available online and via databases.

See the UQ Library Legal Research Guide.

Government documents can be a major source of information and data. These documents include Hansard (Parliamentary debates), parliamentary papers, green papers and a wealth of government department reports. Government information and publications are becoming increasingly available via the web. However, for older material, you may need to search library catalogues or consult printed indexes.

The reports produced by non-government, educational and private organisations (for example, the World Bank or World Health Organisation, or a university) are excellent resources for research. They are topical and academic in nature, often contain detailed statistical data, and are usually very up-to-date, often annually rewritten.

Often the best place to obtain reports of this nature is from the organisation's website (see open access). If the report is not available electronically, you may request it through our document delivery service or your liaison librarian may be able to order a copy to add to the library's collection.

Statistical datasets are available from a number of organisations, both government and non-government, and cover a range of topics. Supporting your argument with statistics can be a powerful tool for any researcher. You will need to work out which site or resource provides access to the data you require. See the UQ Library Subject Guide on Statistics (International). Read the Help files for the resource you select for assistance with building your statistical query and manipulating and downloading your dataset.

All maps, atlases and digital map data held by the University of Queensland Library are listed in the catalogue. Maps are available in several formats including:



• Printed sheets or atlases
• Digital data either on electronic databases or via the Internet

Electronic databases include eBimap and the Brisbane City Plan Maps.

For further information on finding maps see the UQ Library How-to guide on Map Information.

There is often useful information in theses which has not (or not yet) been published elsewhere. See the UQ Library How-To Guide on Finding Theses.

In theory you may not need basic reference given the advanced stage of your studies. However from time to time you will need basic knowledge of some field that relates to your work. You would probably benefit from a walk through the print Reference Collection in your branch library. You are not dependant on print reference — see Quick reference in Toolkit on the library front page. Also, for both print and online reference, have a look through some Subject Guides.

There is no easy way of navigating the wealth of resources now available on the web. Subject gateways like Intute can help to locate quality resources.

There are smarter ways of searching Google, by limiting your search to specific domains such as .edu or .gov.au. See the UQ Library How-To Guide on Internet (Web) Searching.

You should be aware of how to access Google Scholar via the UQ Library's proxy server, so that you can access subscription-only resources more easily when using Google Scholar. If you are off campus, always access Google Scholar via this link.

Many databases now offer an alerting service which will allow you to keep up to date with new research in a particular field of study. When you register for such a service, you will receive the alerts via email straight to your inbox or via an RSS feed. Many publishers are using RSS feeds to provide an alerting service to advise on new information as it becomes available. Three types of journal alerts are available: table of contents to alert you to forthcoming issues, keyword search alerts to notify you of new articles matching your search, and citation alerts to notify you when a particular article is cited.

You can also set up alerts from the UQ Library catalogue and many news and blog websites.

See the UQ Library How-To Guide on Alerting Services, RSS Feeds & Email.

Inevitably you will identify articles and books that you need which are not available in the UQ Library. Our document delivery service will obtain these for you. For theses and books you should consider simply contacting your liaison librarian to get the item bought for the library collection.

The contemporary internet and communications, especially the social and interactive web (‘Web 2.0’) and mobile technologies, and formal web based teaching tools like Blackboard, can enable students to rapidly establish contact networks (even if transitory) that in the past would have taken established researchers years to acquire. It still remains that older methods such as email, phone and face-to-face meetings remain the core of networking.

Beginning researchers may wish to accelerate this process. Discovery tools are built into some databases (see Analyse).

The world of open access is a response to rising journal prices which force libraries to cancel subscriptions. There are new peer reviewed journals that have no copyright restrictions. Some of these journals are very highly cited. As a result some commercial publishers are loosening their copyright restrictions. These journals are catalogued by the library and there are lists of open access journals.

Open access also involves the placement of scientific data and publications on the web, usually through a university site. The library established UQ eSpace. You can search there for UQ research and you can place your work there.

Open access is a good source of recent information. The open access world is searchable — see OIAster and Arrow at UQ eSpace. Open access material is also harvested by engines like Scopus, Scirus and Google Scholar.

Some databases, e.g. Web of Science and Scopus, allow you to analyse the results after your search. You can find out who is the most prolific author in your research field. The author's email address is usually included in the database record. You can find out which institution is publishing the most papers on the topic and the peak years of their output. You can sort by times cited to see which papers are cited the most and therefore note which papers and authors have been most influential in the research area.

When you have identified useful references, how will you store and organise them?

The library has a site licence for EndNote, a software package that allows you to create a personal database of references. It includes facilities to store electronic copies of your references and to store your working notes on the references. EndNote works with Microsoft Word to insert references in articles, your thesis or other publications, and from these generate bibliographies. It is very easy to format your document in whatever generic or journal publisher style you require. Endnote also enables you to store full text and find full text.

Effective information gathering is not solely a matter of a set of specific skills. It is about a reflective approach revolving around assessing the quality of information. Sometimes you begin with clarity about the information you want. Then you can plan. Sometimes you are being more explorative. The process becomes intuitive, but you cannot build a useful intuitive base without a reflective approach.

You should consider talking to your liaison librarian about what resources will and will not be available to you when you leave UQ. Some databases and journals are open access (free). For more information see Services for UQ Alumni.