Do not manually edit this table.
Title
Keywords
Description
Version
Description
Author
Organisation
Date
Finding journal articles in human geography
Human geography, journal articles
Suggests databases and tips for human geographers
1
2012
Susan Glen
Swansea University
8/1/16
Finding Journal Articles in Human Geography
This presentation contains some tips on:
•
The best databases to use for human geography
•
Search techniques
•
How to access journal articles
•
You will also find guides to individual databases within this Blackboard course
& you are welcome to contact the team for help with any of this.
Which databases should I use?
<heading>Database Passwords</heading>
You will need your university username and password (as for email, blackboard etc.)
to access many of our databases and e-journals, especially off campus. It is best to
go through one of our services: iFind, iFind Research or iGetit as that will take you to
the correct login point. If you are not able to do this there is a handout in the Using
Online Resources part of this course which will help you to work out where to login.
<heading>iFind Research</heading>
•
iFind Research is an index which lists the databases we have available for
different subjects so you can use it to explore what is available for
Geography.
<heading>iFind Articles & More</heading>
The articles & more option in the library catalogue allows you to find journal articles
on a topic. The search options aren’t as sophisticated as some of the other
databases so it is often best to use other tools as well. iFind is effective at finding
things which are available at Swansea straight away though so it can make a good
starting point.
Carry out a keyword search then look at the left hand side for these options. Clicking
full text online will restrict your results to articles which you can access online now.
Peer-reviewed journals are usually the most serious academic journals so you can
also click this option if this is what you want. You will see other choices in this area
such as language and date which you can use to cut down the number of results.
<heading>Proquest databases</heading>
Proquest databases includes ASSIA (Abstracts in Social Sciences Indexes
and Abstracts) and IBSS (International Bibliography of the Social Sciences).
They can be searched from the one site and provide a good starting point for
many human geography topics.
When you access Proquest databases you will find images for different
subjects. Choose Social Sciences.
<heading>Full text databases</heading>
JSTOR and EBSCO Business Source Complete are two electronic journal
databases which give full text. This can be useful if you need to get hold of
something quickly! Despite the name the EBSCO database covers a wide
range of subjects.
<heading>General databases</heading>
Web of Science and Scopus are databases which cover all main academic
areas so can be very useful if you draw a blank elsewhere or if your subject is
interdisciplinary.
Starting your search
The first step in a successful search is to think about the keywords you will use.
There may be synonyms, alternative spellings and acronyms used in a database. For
example, if your topic is:
growth of cities
you would also need to think about terms such as urban, development, city,
growing and perhaps construction, population and migration.
If you need ideas you could try looking at reference books such as encyclopedias
and subject dictionaries (some found on the central shelves of the library Study Hall).
For example:





Dictionary of Concepts in Human Geography
A Modern Dictionary of Geography
Dictionary of Human Geography
The New Penguin Dictionary of Geography
Companion Encyclopedia of Geography: the Environment and Humankind
If you are searching the Proquest databases try using the thesaurus which you will
find on the Advanced search screen. These are the terms for cities suggested by the
ASSIA database.
Search Techniques
<heading>AND</heading>
In most literature databases using the command AND tells the database to search for
results including both your terms.
For example in these results from the Proquest databases you can see that both the
term growth and the term cities appear in each one.
<heading>OR</heading>
The command OR allows you to look for alternative terms so in this case results can
include growth or development along with either cities or towns.
<heading>Truncation</heading>
Most databases have a truncation or wildcard symbol which you can put on the end
of a word to avoid having to type out different endings. In this example grow* would
pick up grows, growth, growing, develop* would pick up developing, developed,
development, develops and cit* would pick up city or cities.
In this case cit* has also picked up citizen so you may need to use truncation with
caution in some cases. Here it might be best just to enter city OR cities.
Getting the full text
<heading>iGetIt@Swansea</heading>
Most of these databases, apart from JSTOR and EBSCO, index a wide range of
journals which are not all available at Swansea. Look for the iGetit@Swansea link or
button:
This will link into our systems to see if the article is available.
<heading>Checking the catalogue</heading>
Alternatively you can check iFind to see if we hold the journal you need. Change the
search option to Journal title.
If the journal is online, click Online to see which years of the journal are available –
make sure it includes the year you need before going into the journal site. Sometimes
there may be more than one link to a journal. It usually doesn’t matter which you use
unless the links cover different years.
<heading>Document Supply</heading>
If an article is particularly important for your project but is not available in Swansea
your department may authorise an inter-library loan.You can pick up a request form
from library desks or use the online form on our document supply web page.
Articles will usually come within a few days but this can’t be guaranteed so don’t
leave it until the last minute to work out what you will need.
Summary




iFind and Proquest databases are good starting points for human geography
topics.
Think carefully about your search terms.
Try using search techniques such as AND, OR and truncation to improve your
search.
If you cannot find the material you need for your topic contact the subject
team for help.