Finding Information Information Literacy Skills

Transcription

1 Learn Outcomes Finding Information Information Literacy Skills By the end of the lesson students will be able to: Formulate effective database searches Locating books in the library using the OPAC find e-books, e-journals articles and other online resources via the library website. Identify different types of search engines Search Google Scholar effectively D. Shangwa School of Business Librarian Concepts to be covered Developing search strategies Searching OPAC Navigating the library website Searching different research databases subscribed to by university library Using different types of search engines Open access resources Pre-search Understand your search problem. Develop a search strategy Understand your search problem Before you begin your search analyze your assignment in order to understand what exactly your lecturer expects: What is the problem to be solved? What information is needed? What are the key issues? Developing search strategies Planning is important in research. Process will help you to set out a clear path for gathering the right information needed to achieve your search goal: 1

2 Search strategies Indentify key search terms Limit your search Truncation, wildcards, phrases Boolean logic operators Other operators Identify search terms Key concepts and keywords Synonyms Related terms Alternative spellings Specialist terms Boolean operators AND combine terms OR either terms NOT exclude Communication AND barriers Small business OR SMEs Communication NOT verbal 2

3 Locating information You can use the following tools to find information: Library catalogue (OPAC) Library website Internet search engines Library OPAC All books held by CUT library are listed in the catalogue (OPAC) You can search by: Author Title Topic SEARCHING THE CATALOGUE * Accessible on campus network only at this stage Library website Is the one-stop-shop access to the library s online collections: E-journal databases E-book databases Audio visual lecture series CUT Institutional Repository 3

4 Electronic Journals Use this search box to search all databases simultaneously 42 full-text databases subscribed to in 2016 Open access databases E-book Collections Subscribed databases: E-braryAcademic Complete EBSCOhost e-book collection Elsevier Science Direct (Via HINARI) IMF elibrary Taylor & Francis World bank e-library Open access Book Boon DOAB IntechOpen Stewart Henry Talks There are two main collections on offer: The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection Over 1,500 lectures organised into series. The Marketing and Management Collection Over 700 presentations subdivided into 60 series CUT Institutional Repository A local digital library containing: Research papers Workshop presentations Exam papers Dissertations Teaching material Internet searching The internet is a network of computer networks. No one controls what is published on the internet. There is the very good and the very bad Exercise caution when search the internet for scholarly purposes 4

5 Types of Search Engines Individual search engines (Crawlerbased) e.g. Google, Yahoo, askjeeves Meta search engines (No index) E.g. Metacrawler.com, Dogpile.com Subject directories (Human created) E.g. Pinakes Scholarly Search Engines Google Scholar specifically searches scholarly literature and academic resources. Google Books searches and retrieves book content Windows Academic live searches and retrieves scholarly literature Other Specialized Search Engines

6 Open Access Open access is a deliberate effort being made to make scholarly research available free of charge. Examples: (e-journals) (Research literature generated by Universities and research organizations from around the world) A smart student Uses quality sources For great results Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge. Patrick Ness Just ask a Librarian if you need help -THE END- 6