Scribd
Upload
16 views29 pages

Basics of Retrieving Literature - Bpatc

The document outlines the fundamentals of searching and retrieving literature, emphasizing the importance of search preparation, various types of information searches, and the information search process. It details the formulation of search strategies, types of search techniques, and practical examples of applying these strategies using different search tools. Additionally, it covers advanced search techniques, including Boolean logic, phrase searching, and the use of search operators in platforms like Google.

Uploaded by

fardinislamakash127
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
16 views29 pages

Basics of Retrieving Literature - Bpatc

The document outlines the fundamentals of searching and retrieving literature, emphasizing the importance of search preparation, various types of information searches, and the information search process. It details the formulation of search strategies, types of search techniques, and practical examples of applying these strategies using different search tools. Additionally, it covers advanced search techniques, including Boolean logic, phrase searching, and the use of search operators in platforms like Google.

Uploaded by

fardinislamakash127
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 29

Basics of searching and

retrieving literature

S.M. Zabed Ahmed, PhD (Loughborough, UK)


Professor, Dept. of Information Science and
Library Management, University of Dhaka
Learning objectives
 The importance of search preparation
 The types of information searches
 The information search process
 The formulation of search strategies
 The types of search techniques
 The application of search techniques to various
search tools
Preparing the search
 Search tools
 Obtaining information needs
 Analysis of information need
 Decide on the database
Search tools
 Dictionary/glossary
 Encyclopaedia
 Thesaurus
 Guide to the literature
 Database manual
Obtaining user needs
Online/printed search request form:
 Name:
 Address/affiliation:
 Telephone/email/Fax:
 Type of search: basic/advanced
 Statement of need:
 Keywords:
 Database(s) to be searched:
 Any filters, such as years, language, etc.
Analysis of information needs
 Analyzing the need and break down the topic into
concepts or keywords

 Example: role of aspirin in reducing the risk of heart


attack

 aspirin
 acetylsalicylic acid

 heart attack
 myocardial infarction
Decide on the database
 Is it a full text, reference or citation database?
 What subject area(s) does it cover?
 What date range does it cover?
 What types of material does it include?
 How is it indexed – natural language or controlled
vocabulary?
Information search process
Information search process
The basic tasks include:
Formulation
Action
Review of results
Refinement
Types of searches
 Simple search
 Advanced search
 Meta search

 Search for known items:


 What do we know about the search?
 Source, author, title, etc.
 doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/5.771073
Simple search
 Enter some keywords to perform a quick search
from a database or from a search engine:
 May retrieve a huge amount of search outputs
 The user would be required to apply advanced

search techniques to narrow down the search


Advanced search
The use of advanced search options helps to:
 Apply filters
 Reduce number of items retrieved

 Apply multiple search fields


Meta search
 The user uses a variety of search tools
simultaneously.
 Meta search engines such as Dogpile,
Metacrawler, etc.
 Discovery tools such as Summon, EBSCO

Discovery Service, etc.


Formulation of search strategy
Factors to be considered:
What is the purpose of the information?
Is there a timeframe for the required information?
Is the information required general or specific?
What sources would best retrieve the required
information, general or specific tools?
Search techniques
 Boolean logic
 Parenthesis
 Phrase searching
 Truncation
 Wildcards
 Field searching
Boolean operators
The logic uses the following operators AND, OR, NOT
 AND – narrows the search
 OR – broadens the search

 NOT – excludes unwanted words or concepts to

focus the search


Boolean operators: example
Parenthesis
It forces the order of how information is retrieved. For
example, the retrieval of information related to
diabetes prevention and control can be searched as:

Diabetes AND (Prevention OR control)


Truncation and wildcards
 To increase the number of hits retrieved, you might consider
using a truncation symbol. Truncation will pick up variations of a
word stem. Truncation symbols vary, depending on the database.

e.g., critic* will find critic, critics, criticism, critical, etc.

The wildcard symbol can be used to replace one letter in a word.
This will instruct the computer to do a search and match all
letters in the word and use any letter to replace the wildcard
symbol.

e.g., Wom?n will retrieve records with woman and women.
Phrase searching
Some systems allow double quotes to only retrieve
documents in which those words appear side-by-
side. Phrase searching is a powerful search
technique for significantly narrowing your search
results, and it should be used as often as possible.
 "John F. Kennedy"
 "Walt Disney World"
 "global warming"
Field searching
 Within a bibliographic database, there are data
fields for the title, author, affiliation, journal or
book title and language, among others. The user
can use any of these fields to retrieve the required
information.
 a user can search for an article by a certain author on
a specific topic such as climate change by Ainun
Nishat
Adjacency/Proximity
 Sometimes it is useful to search for terms that
you think may appear near each other or next
to each other, but not necessarily in the same
order.
 Example: Dhaka NEAR university
Some practical examples
1. Need: I am interested in dyslexia in adults.
 Boolean logic: AND
 Search: dyslexia AND adults

2. Need: I need information about diarrhoea.


 Boolean logic: OR
 Search: diarrhoea OR cholera

3. Need: I'm interested in radiation, but not nuclear radiation.


 Boolean logic: NOT
 Search: radiation NOT nuclear

4. Need: I want to learn about dehydration caused by diarrhoea.


 Boolean logic: AND, OR
 Search: dehydration AND (diarrhoea OR cholera)
Practical demo
 Google
 JSTOR
 Emerald
 HINARI/AGORA/OARE
 Internet piracy!
Google search operators
 Boolean AND, OR and NOT
 politics AND media (default option)
 windows OR linux / windows  linux
 chattogram ‑chittagong
 Phrase searching
 “information retrieval”
 Nesting/parenthesis
 (ipad OR iphone) apple
Google search operators
 Wildcard
 “information * systems”
 Proximity search
 national AROUND(4) policy
Google search operators
 Site search
 site:du.ac.bd
 Filetype
 site:du.ac.bd filetype:pdf / site:du.ac.bd ext:pdf
 Cache search
 cache:du.ac.bd
Google search operators
 intitle intitle:cartography
 allintitle allintitle:dhaka university library
 inurl inurl:macbook
 allinurl allinurl:apple macbook
 intext intext:macbook
 allintext allintext: macbook intel
 related related:makemytrip.com
Thank you!

You might also like