for Students

MODULE 1: EFFECTIVE SEARCHING

LESSON 3: MANAGING INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Title
Effective Searching
Module 1, Lesson 3
Managing Information Overload

Introduction
After you feel confident selecting search terms and constructing a search string,
you’ll find yourself with a list of search results that might look great—or might be
overwhelming. You might also find yourself with search results that are related to your
topic, but are not specifically what you need. In this lesson, you’ll learn strategies for
managing information overload, including:

» How to plan your research efficiently based on your project outline

» How to refine your search for a manageable set of relevant results

» How to document your sources so that they’re easier to access and use

Project Planning
Before you begin the search process, be sure to review your project outline. Aligning
your search with the project’s requirements will save you time in the long run. For
example, if your assignment specifies that you use “recent” or “current” sources, you
will probably want to use the advanced search option to narrow the dates on your
search. That way, you won’t waste time reviewing resources that aren’t appropriate for
your assignment.

You will be most successful in your scholarly research if you plan ahead and give
yourself extra time for potential complications or changes. For example, imagine a
really promising citation for an article that fits your information needs exactly—except
that the full text of the article isn’t available through your database. If you discover this
citation the day before your project is due, you don’t have any options for finding the
full article. But if you have a week of lead time, you might ask your librarian for help and
discover that the article is available via interlibrary loan in a few days’ time.

Keeping your project outline at the forefront will also help you know when to stop
searching for a specific subtopic and move on to other needed information. You’ll be
most efficient if you stop when you have enough information to complete your work.

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JSTOR Research Basics for Students Module 1: Effective Searching | Lesson 3: Managing Information Overload
Your Search Results
When you’ve conducted your initial search, take a look at the results to get a sense of
how effective your search string is.

First, how many results are there? For example, if your search produces no results, or
very few results, that may not be enough material for you to work with. With such a
small set of results, you should also consider the possibility that you might be excluding
some useful sources. If your search produces 15,000 results, on the other hand, it’s not
realistic to think you’ll be able to review all of them to find the useful ones.

Next, how relevant do the results seem at a glance? Have you put them in order by
relevance? Scan through the results and see what pops out at you. Do they seem too
technical, too broad, or just plain irrelevant? Are there terms that appear over and over
— and if so, are those terms useful for your topic?

Think of searching as a process, not an event. It’s pretty unusual to get a perfect, useful,
relevant set of results from the very first search string you enter.

Next, you’ll learn how to adjust your search to get a broader or narrower set of results.

Narrowing Search Results

If you’re overwhelmed with search results, there are several ways to work toward a more
useful and workable set of results.

First, double-check the construction of your search string. If you’ve used a set of
quotation marks or a set of parentheses, make sure it’s closed correctly and encloses the
intended terms. Make sure that any Boolean operators, like AND or OR, are capitalized.

Next, scan the first page or two of results and see how you might refine them. Most
databases include an “advanced search” screen that allows you to be more specific
about what results you want to see. Advanced search capabilities vary from one
database to another, but these are a few common options to customize your search:

» Date: You can choose results published before or after a certain date, or within a
certain date range.

» Item type: You can select results by publication type: for example, only books, only
journal articles, or only book reviews.

» Discipline: In some cases, you can narrow your search to publications in a certain
field or discipline.

» Publication title: You can search only for articles published in a certain journal.

» Full text: Some databases do not provide full-text access to every article that they
include. In these cases, you can usually limit your search so that you see only results

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 where the full text is available. You may choose to find items that include your
search terms anywhere in the text, or only those that include your search terms in
the title.

» Language: You can restrict your search to materials in a certain language.

Some databases with a broader scope offer the option to restrict your search to peer-
reviewed journals only, or may allow you to narrow your search to include only results
that list references.

After you’ve used the advanced search options to narrow down your search, reassess
the results and adjust your search string accordingly. Do you keep seeing a term or
idea that isn’t relevant to your research? Use the NOT operator to exclude it from your
next set of search results. Do you see a term that is useful but isn’t in your search
string? Using AND to add it to your search string will narrow down the current set of
results.

You might also reassess the terms you’ve used. Is there a more specific version that’s
likely to get you fewer results—and results that are more specific to your topic? A
search for “opera singers” yields a lot of results, but a search for the more specific
term “mezzo sopranos” brings up a much smaller set.

Finally, think about adding terms that narrow the search by geography, time, or
discipline. A search for surfing will give you a lot of results, probably too many to wade
through. But a search about surfing in Kauai, a search about surfing in the 1920s, or a
search about the physiology of surfers will give you a much more focused, manageable
set of results.

What if you’ve constructed a really solid search string and refined your results as far
as possible, but still have too many results to sift through? This might be a good time
to reassess the database you’re using. Is there another that might be better tailored to
your topic?

If you’re using the best database with your best search skills and still flooded with
search results, it’s possible that your topic is just too broad. This is a good time to
call on your librarian for guidance about how to use the library’s resources to find the
information you’re looking for.

Too Few Results

If your search gives you fewer results than you had hoped or expected, you can make
a few simple changes to your search string that will bring you a larger set of results.

First, rethink your terminology. If you’ve used a very specialized term, consider
changing it to a broader term. For example, the specialized term “shin hanga,” a type

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of Japanese woodblock printing, yields a very small set of results. But the broader term
“Japanese woodblock printing” gives you a much larger set of results to work with.

Second, consider minor adjustments to the way your search string is constructed. If
you’ve connected two words using AND, think about changing the operator to OR, which
will produce a larger set of results. You can also remove one of your search terms to
increase the number of results.

Finally, try truncating a search term. Truncating is a way of reducing a word to its most
basic part. This allows the database to pull up all of the forms of the word, instead of just
the one you’ve entered. Most databases let you truncate using an asterisk. So a search
for the truncated term child* will pull up results that use the words child, child’s, children,
and children’s—whereas searching for children’s pulls up only the results that use the
specific form of the word.

To truncate a search term, examine the search term you are using. What other variations
of that word might be used in publications on the topic? Your goal is to reduce the
word to its most basic form so that all of its other potential forms will come up in your
search results. For example, if you’re looking for articles about how to teach music, use
the truncated form teach* to include articles that use the words teacher, teachers, and
teaching.

On the other hand, be aware that truncating a search term too much may bring in
unrelated results. For example, if you are searching for information on staying in hostels,
the truncated term host* will also get you results that discuss the unrelated topics of
hostesses, hostages, and hostility. Truncating to hostel* will get you a more precise set of
results about hostels, hostelry, and hostelers.

Staying Organized
Your research, and ultimately the creation of your academic paper, will be easier and
simpler if you take care to document your sources throughout your research.

When you’re searching a database, you will usually have the option to save chosen
citations within a search session. This allows you to pick and choose citations as you
adjust your search terms, and not have to worry about losing a promising lead.

Pay attention to how long these citations are saved. Some databases erase them after
your search session ends, while others allow you to create a personal account and save
them indefinitely. If you’re not sure, it never hurts to export your chosen citations to a
text file before you wrap up your search session.

Some databases also offer you the option to save your search strings themselves,
making it easier to move back and forth between multiple complex search strings.

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 Citation Management
Many software packages and apps are available to help you organize your sources and avoid
information overload as you move between different sources for your research. Check with
your librarian to see which ones may be available through your library.

When you’ve collected citations within a database, you can choose to export your citations
in a format compatible with many popular citation management programs. Functionality is
different for each specific program, but generally, these programs can do some or all of the
following:

» Save full text of the articles you select

» Allow you to add your own tags to sources

» Search across the text of multiple articles

» Produce citations in multiple formats

Choose a citation management program, or another way of managing your sources,

before you start your research. This will streamline your research and ensure that you stay
organized from the very beginning.

One final tip for keeping your sources organized: if you download copies of your articles, use
a consistent naming convention that will keep them organized and help you remember their
contents.

Next Steps
Remember the question from the beginning of this module: where would you start
finding information for a research paper about a writer you’ve never heard of? Now that
you’ve learned how to evaluate your library’s sources and construct an effective search
string, maybe you can see why typing the person’s name into Google isn’t necessarily
the best answer.

» Next, we’re going to move into a few practice activities related to what you’ve just
learned.

» Then, you’ll check yourself by taking an assessment of what you’ve learned in

Module 1.

» After you’ve completed these activities, it’s time to move on to Module 2, where
you will learn how to evaluate sources and determine how reliable they are for
academic research.

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JSTOR Research Basics for Students Module 1: Effective Searching | Lesson 3: Managing Information Overload