Accessing available resources. A guide on how to access online resources that are available

Transcription

1 Accessing available resources A guide on how to access online resources that are available

2 VUT Library resources The Da Vinci Institute and VUT have been in partnership for the last few years There is a wealth of information available through the VUT library that is at your disposal through the course of your studies Registration is easy simply check the details typed in on the application form included in your welcome pack, sign and date it If for some reason you do not have an application form, you can get it from your Key Account Manager, or it can be downloaded from: (only typed applications will be accepted by VUT) These applications will be collected and sent to VUT for registration Registration can take up to 2 weeks but you will be notified by me, the Information Officer once you have been registered

3 Planning your search Until you do get registered on the VUT library, there are many other resources you can make use of, for example Google Scholar Before you begin any search (either through VUT, Google Scholar or any other database or resource), we suggest that you develop a search plan Consider the words, phrases, terms, etc. that adequately describes your topic In some cases, the terms you ve listed might have synonyms that could be valuable to use during your search. If you go to you can insert the applicable search terms and review the synonyms that appear, to evaluate if there is anything of relevance or value

4 Or Boolean Search terms Gives either or both search items

5 And Retrieves results that contain both search terms

6 Not Retrieves results that include first term, but exclude second term

7 Wildcard and Truncation Truncation Retrieves all words that start with the same letters Educat? Will give education, educator educate

8 Wildcard Replaces a letter inside a word Wom?n will give woman AND women

9 Quotationmarks Searches for an exact phrase truth and reconciliation will only give results that include truth and reconciliation in that order Truth and reconciliation will give results for truth and results for reconciliation and truth and reconciliation

10 Putting it into practice In this example, I ve searched for research methodology and it s yielded hits

11 Putting it into practice As soon as I add my hits are down to This is still a lot, so let s see if we can narrow it down further.

12 Putting it into practice I ve now added in a second search phrase, also within inverted commas, and my hits are now This is probably still too much to go through

13 Putting it into practice Let s say I want to exclude any information with the term quantitative. I then use a dash before the term, and my hits are down to 780

14 Putting it into practice I ve narrowed it down to 152 results, once I put in that I only want filetype:pdf

15 Accessing the VUT library Once you ve been registered, go to: and then click on VUT.ac.za.

16 Accessing the VUT library A database example:

17 Accessing the VUT library Once you ve clicked Remote Access for the database you d like to access, a login page appears where you will need to type your surname and Da Vinci student number in and click Submit

18 Accessing the VUT library In this case, I want to search for an ebook

19 Accessing the VUT library I can choose a category, or search for specific terms to download or read an ebook

20 Other resources available There are a multitude of other resources and databases available through the Da Vinci e-resources portal accessible through the Student Zone. This can be accessed using:

21 Thank you and all the best with your studies! Dewald Kruger Information Officer