Short Learning Progamme: Part 2 - Advanced Information Literacy: Unit 3: Search strategies

Search strategies

Search strategies are ways of using search terms in finding required information from search tools, such as search engines (Google), the library catalogue and online databases. 

To achieve good search results, it is necessary to use search strategies.
The following are some of the most common search strategies that are applicable to various searching tools.
• Boolean Logic
• Parenthesis
• Phrase searching
• Truncation
• Wildcards
• Field searching

Identify search terms

• Identifying search terms is a search strategy that helps you to refine the searching process. 
• Before you start your search for information on the Internet or in a database, it is always a good idea to identify the most important keywords of your research topic. It is those words that describe his topic the best. You can then use those keywords or search terms to start searching for information. 
• When identifying search terms, you must pay particular attention to the following aspects to ensure that all likely relevant terms are included in the search strategy:

Boolean Operators

In electronic databases, you can use special words like AND, OR, and NOT to make your searches more specific or broad. These words are called Boolean operators.

When you're searching, you can look for matches in different parts of the information, like the title, author, subject headings, or notes. Once you know the main ideas you're looking for, you need to decide how these ideas should be connected using Boolean operators.

Here's what each Boolean operator does:
- AND: narrows down your search by looking for records that have all the words you've used. It makes your search more specific.
- OR: broadens your search by looking for records that have any of the words you've used. It makes your search broader.
- NOT: excludes certain words from your search. It helps you remove irrelevant results.

When you use Boolean operators, it's important to remember that in most search engines, you need to type them in CAPITAL letters.

By using Boolean operators, you can improve your searches and find the information you need more effectively.

• And combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example, travel and Europe find articles that contain both travel and Europe.
• Or combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. For example, college or university finds results that contain either college or university.
• Not excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example, television not cable finds results that contain television but not cable.

Truncation 

Truncation means to make shorter. 

After identifying all the possible relevant search terms, you must decide whether you are going to use truncation (*,?) to extend the search strategy. Truncation may be used to restrict the search to a word stem.

• Example: Searching for politi* will find information on politics, politicians, political, politically. Do not truncate too early in the word, as poli* will also find information on police, polite, policy. Some search engines also use wildcard searching, where you can use organi*ation to search for organization or organisation.
• Example: Wom?n
• Information on both woman and women will be retrieved
• Middle truncation is especially useful to provide for spelling variations
  
  

Parentheses

Parentheses are symbols () or "" put around words to show what is inside should be kept together. 
Example: “conceptual art” will get different results from conceptual art. Using inverted commas to indicate a phrase will get fewer and better results.

Example of parentheses using brackets
 

Phrase searching

"Phrase Searching" means searching for two or more words as an exact phrase. This allows you to find documents containing a particular phrase e.g. “air pollution” or “biofuel energy”.

Snowballing

You can try Snowballing: assuming you find at least one relevant journal article you can use as a basis for future searches, for example, you can look at the list of references at the end of the article to see what related work the author has cited.

Nesting

Nesting (or 'GROUPING') is a keyword search technique that keeps alike concepts together and tells a search engine or database to search those terms placed in parentheses first.
Using Nesting in a search requires that the items in parentheses be searched first. Generally, the items in parentheses are linked by the Boolean Operator "OR."
You can use Nesting when you are trying to link two or more concepts that may have many synonyms or may be represented by a number of different terms to obtain more comprehensive search results.
Example: Using (South Africa OR Africa) AND HIV/AIDS will search South Africa or Africa first.

Database searching

Follow this presentation on how to search the Ebsco database.

You can now use his search techniques in any database. A database is developed to recognise specific search techniques, such as Boolean Operators, Phrase Searching, Truncation etc. You can access UJ library database from the library homepage. To gain access to the library databases, You need to login with his username (student number) and password (ULink password).

Search engines

A search engine is a software program that helps people find the information they are looking for online using keywords or phrases. Search engines are able to return results quickly—even with millions of websites online—by scanning the Internet continuously and indexing every page they find (BDC, n.d.) 

Advantages

• The indexes of search engines are usually vast, representing significant portions of the Internet, offering a wide variety and quantity of information resources. The large number and variety of search engines enrich the Internet, making it at least appear to be organised.
• In addition to keywords, search engines let you use advanced search options to refine your results. These options help make your searches more flexible and sophisticated.
• Good source to locate scholarly information.

Disadvantages

• Anyone can publish information on the Internet
• No bibliographic control on published  information
• Content and features of sites change very fast
• Creates information overload

Examples

General: Google, Google Scholar, Bing (Microsoft's search engine).

Google tips

Internet searches, such as using the search engine ‘Google’ will give Neo different types of information than searching a scholarly journal database.

Recognise official links as opposed to commercial websites.
• .edu (It sometimes means it is related to educational or research material)
• .gov (It usually means it is related to government resources ).
• .org (It usually is related to official organisations, eg. United Nations)

Google will also provide ‘related searches’ that might help Neo to narrow down his research topic. For example, Neo needs information on the postmodern theorist Fredric Jameson.

Scroll down to bottom of the page and look at what type of information it provides. This might help him to narrow down his search.

• Put quotation marks "__" around words that one wants to search as a phrase; i.e. “semiotics analysis"
• To remove a word from a search, use the hyphen (minus sign) - just in front of the word; i.e. semiotics theorists
• -Barthes (excludes search term)
• -COM will remove commercial sites from one's results.
• To search colleges & university sites, use site: edu as part of one's search. Neo can use site: with any domain. Must be a lower case (s) in site. No suffixes. E.g site:newyorktimes.com.
• A plus + symbol in front of a word means the word will definitely be in the search; i.e. +“barthes“
• .. Shows all results from within the designated time range, e.g 2008..2013.
Definitions
• Just put define:… in front of the word one wants, e.g define: semiotics.

A systematic search requires you to organise and approach the search process in a structured and preplanned manner.

Determine a clear and focused question

• A systematic search can best be applied to a well-defined and precise research question.
• Questions that are too broad or too vague cannot be answered easily in a systematic way and will generally result in an overwhelming number of search results.
• On the other hand, a question that is too specific will result in too few or even no search results. 

Think about:

• What subtopics, specific issues, and key debates can be generated from the broader topic?
• What is the value of focusing on a particular period of time, a particular geographical location, a particular organisation, or a particular group of people?
• What do you want to say in your assignment.
• What are the key points and arguments that you want to get across?
• Which subtopic, timeframe or other limitation would allow you to make these points in the most effective way?

Describe the articles that can answer the question

• Scan and highlight articles that can indeed answer the question.
• Look at what research can answer the question. would look like. These hypothetical (when possible, combined with known) articles can be used as guidance for constructing the search strategy.

Decide which key concepts address the different elements of the question

• Key concepts are the topics or components that the applicable articles should address. For example, climate change, global warming, weather patterns, greenhouse gasses. These key concepts from the research question can be grouped to create elements in the search strategy.

Decide which elements should be used for the best results

• Not all elements of a research question should necessarily be used in the search strategy.
• Some elements are less important than others or may unnecessarily complicate or restrict a search strategy.
• Adding an element to a search strategy increases the chance of missing relevant references. Therefore, the number of elements in a search strategy should remain as low as possible to optimise retrieval.

Choose an appropriate database

Ask the following questions?

What type of literature do I need?

• Books, articles, datasets, statistics, legislation, reports etc.

Which journals are covered by the databases

• Different databases cover different disciplines.
• Think about your research question and the purpose of the database.

Does the database cover my topic?

• Some databases index the literature from all subject areas, while others specialise in one particular subject area. 
• Some databases provide a list of the journal titles that they index.  Most databases allow you to do a search by journal name.

Will the database answer my research questions?

• To find the most recent in-depth answers to your research questions, look at the database index and the A-Z journal databases. 
• Some articles contain original data from research projects which are referred to as primary literature.  
• In a review, the author has selected the most important primary articles and given an overview of the key developments on a topic, which are referred to as secondary literature.
• Review articles can be very useful when you are investigating a topic that is new to you. 

Review the search results

• When you carry out a systematic search it is essential to review whether the search strategy you applied retrieved articles relevant to your research topic. 
• Evaluate and put other search terms to the test. Add them to the list of alternative search terms.
• Compare the relationship between already used search terms with possible new search terms you have not tried out, for example: scan the top retrieved articles when sorted by relevance looking for additional relevant synonyms that could be added to the search strategy.

Evaluate results

• The results should now contain relevant references.
• If the interface allows relevance ranking, use that in the evaluation.
• If you know some relevant references that should be included in the research, search for those references specifically; for example, combine a specific (first) author name with a page number and the publication year.
• Check whether those references are retrieved by the search. If the known relevant references are not retrieved by the search, adapt the search so that they are. If it is unclear which element should be adapted to retrieve a certain article, combine that article with each element separately.