Research Skills
Overview of this Session
 Introduction to defining your research topic
 Look at sources of information
 Library collection
 Online subscription databases
 Internet
 Advance searching
 Evaluating information
 Referencing
Defining your research topic
 Make sure you understand exactly what is being asked for.
 What exactly are you required to do?
 What type of assignment is it?
 When is it due?
 How long should it be?
 Start to list keywords, related words and phrases (These will
become search words you can use to search the catalogue,
databases and a the internet).
Sources of information


Magazines and Journals: Printed and electronic

Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/

ANZRC and Onefile databases
Books: Printed and Ebooks


EBSCO Ebooks
Reference sources:

Dictionaries: Oxford Reference Online, The Free Dictionary

Encyclopaedias: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com, Wikipedia

Almanacs: CIA World Fact Book, Whitaker’s Almanack.

Videos: DVD and streamed

Databases: General and specialised

Internet

Libguides http://libguides.gcit.edu.au/
Library Catalogue
 Books
 Ebooks
 Video
 Magazines
 http://libguides.gcit.edu.au/
Online Database
 General Databases: Australia New Zealand Reference Centre
& One File.
 Specialised databases: Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Standards Australia & Virtual ILC.
 http://libguides.gcit.edu.au/
Internet
 Huge amount of information.
 Need to be aware of the quality of the
information you find.
 Domain: .edu, .gov, .org and .com
 Wikipedia?
Tools for searching the Internet
 Search Engines: A database of websites created by a web crawler.
 http://www.google.com.au/
 http://au.altavista.com/
 http://www.ask.com/
 Meta Search Engines: are search engines that search other search engines.
 http://search.yippy.com/
 http://kartoo.com/
 http://www.dogpile.com/
 Subject directories: are lists of website created by humans and arrange by subject.
 http://dir.yahoo.com/
 http://www.about.com/
 http://www.ipl.org/
Advanced Searching
 AND operator is used to narrow your search. Placing the AND
operator between 2 words in your search statement means that both
words have to be present in a web site for it to be included in the
search results.
 OR operator is used to broaden your search. Placing the OR
operator between 2 words in your search statement means that either
word will need to be present in a web site for the site to be included in
the search results.
 NOT operator is used to narrow you search. Placing the NOT
operator in front of a word means that if that word appears in a web
site it will not be included in the results of your search. Some
databases and search engines use a minus sign as a NOT operator.
Advanced Searching
 “” quotation marks are to search for words as a phrase. Placing
quotation marks around a number of words means that if these words
are found in a web page in the same order and next to each other then
the site will be returned in the search results.
 () parentheses are used to force a search engine to do a complex
search in a particular order. A search for (oil OR petroleum) NOT
vegetable will search for oil OR petroleum first and then remove web
pages that contain the word vegetable.
 * an asterisks is used to indicate zero or more letters in a search. A
search for h*s will find web pages containing words that begin with h
and end with s.
Evaluating information
 Authority: Who created the content? The author could be a
well know expert or unknown.
 Accuracy: What is the content based on and are the fact
correct?
 Objectivity: How is it written and is there a bias? The
information could be based on an advertisment.
 Currency: What is the date of publication?
 Coverage: How much detail do you require? Do you require
information from a particular geographic location?
Referencing
 Referencing is a systematic way of acknowledging sources of
information
 There many types of referencing. There are 2 types used at
GCIT:
 APA Referencing (American Psychological Association)
 Harvard Referencing
 http://libguides.gcit.edu.au/
What is Referencing?
 Referencing is a standardised way of acknowledging
sources of information and ideas that you have used
for writing assignments (Curtin University Library,
2010)
 Information sources include:
 Published and unpublished
 Interviews
 Books
 Magazines
 Internet
 Videos
Why is Referencing Necessary?
 To acknowledge and give credit to the originators of
works and ideas you have use in your assignment. Using
someone else’s work or ideas without acknowledgement
is plagiarism.
 To add weight to an argument you are making in your
assignment.
 To allow readers to examine your sources of information
and ideas.
 To show that you are familiar with the relevant literature.
(Cope, 2006)
What is plagiarism?
 The Gold Coast Institute of TAFE student assessment policy
(2007) describes plagiarism as “the act of taking and using
another person’s work as one’s own” (p.2).
 Plagiarism is taken very seriously by Gold Coast Institute of TAFE.
Penalties for plagiarism are outlined in the Gold Coast Institute
of TAFE Student Assessment Policy and include an automatic
unsatisfactory mark and suspension from further classes (Gold
Coast Institute of TAFE, 2007).
How do I reference?
Referencing consists of three steps.
These are :
1. Recording details of any information sources that you will
use for writing your assignment.
2. Inserting in-text citations within the text of your
assignment. This is a brief note with in the text of your
assignment showing the source of the information you have
used.
3. Adding a reference list to the end of assignment. This is a
list of all information sources that you have used in your
assignment.
How Do I Add an In-Text Citation?
The in-text citation consists of:
 Author last name
 Date of publication
Other in formation that may be required for an intext citation include:
 Page the information is found on
 Paragraph the information if found on (for web
sites)
Examples of in-text citations in APA format
Popple (1995) states that “an understanding of community work
can be related to political values” (p. 4).
Or
It is generally accepted that “an understanding of community
work can be related to political values” (Popple, 1995, p. 4).
Or
It is generally accepted that political values can be related to an
understanding of community work (Popple, 1995).
It was found that “about two-thirds of all cases of diabetes were
undiagnosed before the survey” (Piccinin & Lai, 2006, para. 1).
How Do I Create a Reference List?
 A reference list provides much more
information about information sources used in
your assignment than in-text citations.
 A reference list entry will provide enough detail
about an information source for the reader to
find that information source.
Examples of APA Reference List Entries
Book with one author
Book with each chapter written by a different author
Journal article
Web document
An Example of an APA Reference List
Citations & Bibliographies in Microsoft Word
Select referencing style
Select “Add New Source”
Select “Type of Source” and fill in fields
To add an in-text citation click “Insert Citation” and
select the source.
In-text citation has now been added
Inserting a bibliography
 Place the cursor at the end of your assignment where
you would like to place your bibliography.
 Click “Bibliography” and “Insert Bibliography”
Bibliography has been inserted