Susanne Noll - UCT Writing Centre Presentation 2017

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U L W A Z I
S U S A N N E N O L L
Smart searching techniques

2. Smart searching techniques
Learning Outcome :
By the end of this session you will be able to
1. Undertake a literature search
2. Use the internet for research
3. Find theses, conference papers and specialist materials
4. Understand primary sources such as data, newspapers,
official publications
5. Understand the importance of unique and specific
searches

3. Smart searching techniques
 Why do we need a search strategy?
 Promotes deeper learning about your question
 Leads to better yield of quality research
 Saves time in the long run

4. Smart searching techniques
 Keywords may not be enough
 Use unique, specific terms
 If not, select more words by using:
 synonyms
 alternate spelling, translations
 related terms / words / subjects
 narrower or broader terms

6. Smart searching techniques
Most databases offer Thesauri

7. Smart searching techniques
 Examples:
 corporate culture:
 organizational behavior/character
 corporate identity merger:
 acquisition, take-over, fusion, combination
 unification profitability:
 profit, advantage, return on investment, shareholder value

8. Smart searching techniques
1. Undertake a literature search
 Principles, tips and techniques
 Quick one-stop-shop search
 Databases
 Example EbscoHost, Basic Search, Advanced Search,
• Alerts
• Saved Searches
 Scopus - European
 Bibliographic database containing abstracts and citations for academic journal articles. It
covers 53 million records | 21,915 titles | 5,000 publishers
 Web of Science – US
 Over 90 million records covering 5,300 social science publications in 55 disciplines

9. Smart searching techniques
 Search tips
 Use Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT
 Use truncation and symbols (*, ?) for finding variant
word forms and spellings
 For phrase searching use “ “
 In some cases you can specify the fields to search in,
e.g. title, subject, keywords

10. Smart searching techniques
AND NOTOR

11. Smart searching techniques
 Google Scholar -
 Good to use in complement to Scopus
 including books, conference papers, non-American journals, journals on the fields of
strategy, management, international business, education
 easy access to published articles, HOWEVER
 offers results of inconsistent accuracy,
 inadequate, and less often updated – no reliable impact factor
 frequency of its updates is unknown
 Google Scholar is vulnerable to spam
 uses a PAGE RANK ALGORITHM

12. Smart searching techniques
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm and it assigns a numerical weighting to each element of
a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its
relative importance within these.

13. Smart searching techniques

14. Smart searching techniques

15. Smart searching techniques
GOOGLE SCHOLAR
• Free and accessible for scholarly research
• Includes journal and conference papers, theses and
dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, abstracts, technical
reports and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of
research
• Login via EZProxy
• UCT has access to online subscriptions
• Please consult the following Youtube video:
• “What Google Scholar can do for you”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcrM4sX5W8c

16. Smart searching techniques
 GOOGLE SCHOLAR
 Uses natural language
 Tips and tricks
 Automatic sorted by relevance
 Determined by the number of citations
 May not be most relevant to your search
 Refine by year – click on sort by date” or “since xxxx” or “custom
range”

17. Smart searching techniques
 GOOGLE SCHOLAR
 Inverted commas for phrase
 Boolean operators AND OR
 Google uses dash instead of NOT
 For specific authors: author:Smith
 (no spaces) similarly for specific formats
 Format:pdf and site:nytimes.com election
 SFX – availability on campus and logged in
 Librarylink allows to access digital repositories

18. Smart searching techniques
 GOOGLE SCHOLAR
 Underneath each result : useful links
 Closely related articles
 Cite – 3 different formats to copy and paste
 From here: Import directly to Endnote and/or Refworks
 Save : if you have created a Google account (gmail)
 You will have “MY Library” in which you can collect

20. Smart searching techniques
 GOOGLE SCHOLAR
 Such as electronic thesis collection
 Type in author’s surname and thesis title
 E.g. noll: "Possibilities of applying some knowledge
management techniques"
 Scroll down until you get the thesis link
 Try authors surname and the affiliation, such as
University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria

21. Smart searching techniques
 2. Using the internet for your research
The following slides are taken from a “Web Searching
workshop” which was facilitated by Peter Underwood
(2012) and Mary Nassimbeni (2012)

22. Smart searching techniques
 Internet Searching
 The information retrieval problem
• Mismatching of vocabularies
– Synonyms: e.g. railway / railroad car / automobile
– Polysemes: e.g. table (furniture) / table (data presentation)
• Queries are ambiguous, and are rarely complete – or accurate – statements
of need
• Document descriptions and texts do not always reflect content and intended
use accurately
• The user is the ultimate judge of what seems relevant -- but we don’t know
much about how this judgment is made

23. Smart searching techniques
 Search structure
• keywords describing important concepts
– synonyms
– phrases
• linkages between keywords
• limits on what is retrieved
– language
– time period
– country
– format
• quantity

24. Smart searching techniques
 Search engine choice • South African-based search engine,
useful for locating national and
regional information
http://www.ananzi.co.za
Master site for South African search
engines:
http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/South
Africa.html
• Focus on publication form
http://www.bpubs.com

25. Smart searching techniques

26. Smart searching techniques
 Meta Search Engine
• Allows searching of multiple search services
• Do not normally hold their own data
• May be customised to use selected services
• Example:
http://www.dogpile.com

27. Smart searching techniques
Evaluating web sites and web material
Traditional criteria to be applied
– Accuracy
– Authority
– Objectivity
– Currency
– Coverage
Additional challenges

28. Smart searching techniques
 How to go about evaluation
Advocacy, org
Business, com
Informational, edu ac gov
News, usu com
Personal, often a ~
Use the checklist: the more often you can answer ‘yes’ the more likely it is
that the site/material is reliable

29. Smart searching techniques
 Checklist
Authority
• Can you identify organisation/company/person responsible?
• Is there a link describing goals, purpose, nature of organisation?
• Are there contact details?

30. Smart searching techniques
 Accuracy
• Are sources for any factual information listed so they can be verified?
• Can you detect some sort of quality control? – look at grammar,
spelling etc.
• Are charts, graphs clearly labelled and easy to read?

31. Smart searching techniques
 Objectivity
• Are biases clearly stated?
• Is it easy to distinguish between informational and advertising
content?

32. Smart searching techniques
 Currency
Are there dates to indicate
• When the page was written?
• When it was placed on the web?
• When it was last revised?

33. Smart searching techniques
 Coverage
• Is there an indication that the page has been completed?
• Is there a print equivalent?
• Is it clear what topics the page intends to address?

35. Smart searching techniques
Contemporary sources, but do remember the evaluation criteria
Blogs
http://www.google.com/blogsearch
http://www.findblogs.com/
Twitter
http://www.twitter.com
Facebook
http://www.facebook.com
Wiki
http://wiki.com
– Accuracy
– Authority
– Objectivity
– Currency
– Coverage

36. Smart searching techniques
Specialised Search engines:
Health Databases such as Medline, PubMed, Clinical Key,
OvidSP for Biology and Medicine related subjects
Law databases such as Westlaw, Sabinet Legal, Lexis Nexis

37. Smart searching techniques
3. Finding theses, conference papers and specialist research materials
SA theses : www.lib.uct.ac.za
Databases
SA Cat
Current and completed research
NDLTD (Theses and Dissertations)
African Digital Repository
http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/lib/useful-links
International theses: www.lib.uct.ac.za
Databases
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses

38. Smart searching techniques
Specialist
research
materials

39. Smart searching techniques
 4. Understand primary sources such as data,
newspapers, official publications
 Financial data

40. Smart searching techniques
 Newspapers
 www.lib.uct.ac.za
 Databases, Newspaper Source via EBSCOhost (Fulltext)
 Lexis Nexis Academic (includes Financial Mail, Business Day,
Financial Times, Sunday Times, The Star, The Herald)
 SA Media (Sabinet)
 Library PressDisplay

41. Smart searching techniques
About Government Publications
•They are important sources of primary information.
•Cover all subjects (from agriculture to zoology.)
•Can be in any format (from book to DVD.)
•Can be historical or very current (from 1800 Cape gazettes to this week’s
Government gazettes on-line.).
•Are publications & documents that originate in government.
•Are usually not books explaining politics or public administration.
• Are not publications by political parties or NGO’s

42. Smart searching techniques
 DataFirst
DataFirst is a unit at the University of Cape Town, South Africa
devoted to survey research in Africa. The unit operates a Research Data
Centre and provides basic and advanced training in microdata analysis.
 Eighty20
Eighty20 provides businesses, marketers, policy makers and
developmental organisations with strategic and actionable
insights from data. We offer clients online access to market
research databases, ready made data-rich reports on topical
issues, as well as a full range of bespoke business consulting
projects. Our economists, MBAs, actuaries, and statisticians
provide a unique combination of skills to turn data into insights.

43. Smart searching techniques
Author searches (e.g. H-Index) – Scopus, Web of Science
Journal searches (e.g impact factor) - JCR
Use bibliographies
In summary:
 Choose effective search terms (keywords)
 Use the advanced search option (if one is available)
 Use Boolean operators
 Use truncation
 Use the thesaurus

44. Smart searching techniques
 More possible search strategies:
 By accident
 Discussions with peers
 Recommendation
 Following references
 Citation searching
 Keyword searching
 Systematic reviews
 Alerts

45. Smart searching techniques
 Summary
 Use unique specific terms
 Use the minus operator (-) to narrow the search
 Use quotation marks for exact phrases
 Don't use common words and punctuation
 Capitalization
 Drop the suffixes
 Maximize AutoComplete
 Customize your searches
 Use browser history
 Set a time limit — then change tactics
 Author:noll title:knowledge management abstract:new ideas

46. Smart searching techniques
 Thank you!
 Questions?