Information literacy Skills
E-mail | c.spencer@ncl.ac.uk
SAgE
Today …
• Gain relevant skills which will enable you
to find information for your dissertation
topic by using:
Databases
On-line Journal Services
Web Gateways
• Produce a set of citations (references) to
include in your final report.
A Good Dissertation …
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Well structured with:
Abstract - highlights the scope and relevance with conclusions
Introduction - background, context, objectives
Contents page – clear with conventional notation
Literature Review
Methodology – explain how experiments, surveys etc were done and why
Results
Conclusions - will link to abstract
Appendices – data, maps, questionnaires etc
Conventional referencing and layout is important:
Labelling of figures
Labelling of tables
Books
Conference papers
use Endnote
Journal articles
Max Marks if you have sound:
Critical arguments
Conclusions
Management
• Decide on the type of information you want – books,
journals etc
• Devise a search strategy describing your topic – it will
save time in the long run
• Take time out to think about which resource(s) is best for
your topic – choose quality rather than quantity; broaden
your search strategy if you do not have enough results
• Use EndNote http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/endnote_introduction.php
to store and manage your references and data.
• Back up all your files!
Gathering Information
• Be clear as to what information you need and
how you are going to use it
What is your aim in finding this information?
What new knowledge will you have gained ?
• - Journal article | Standard | Data etc
• Identify the main search terms or
Keywords which you will use in a
computer search, but beware synonyms.
So – what’s the literature?
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Books – good starting points.
Journal articles – concise, up to date and refereed for quality. Often
available electronically.
Conference proceedings – very up to date, sometimes difficult to obtain,
latest research thinking, good quality but not usually refereed
Via the Internet e.g. google search – very comprehensive but quality may
not be good enough; be very selective and evaluate the sources carefully.
Theses – can be useful at PhD level but treat research findings with some
caution. Unlike published journal articles data may not be verified. Hard to
obtain.
Verified Data sources/standards/ - essential for product design e.g.
BS/Eurocodes
Diagrams/software/maps – will often be crucial to science and engineering
Corporate/in-house/Government reports – these may be excellent
sources of important research material. Can be hard to locate.
Newspapers/Magazines – limited use but good for opinions and trends.
Athens Passwords
• An Athens password is needed to access many
of the library’s e-resources
• Athens? – a universal password to access
many different on-line services
• You need to read our web page for instructions
on how to set up your own personal Athens
password:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/athens.html
Your Generic login: nclciv
Password: hgit9269
A good place to start …
• www.ncl.ac.uk/library
• www.ncl.ac.uk/library/resin
• Take time to explore the different menus
Engineering Resources
• Level 4 - Books and Journals
• Specific resources – check out
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/lim/sage/sagehome.html
Finding the Literature…
e-resources …include
> Journal articles
> Conference proceedings
> Reference data
> Citations
> Theses
> Digital maps
…and much more - delivered to your desktop!
A Literature Search …
• Finds information related to your topic of interest
• You may need to use many different sources to
find this information
• It’s best to make a plan or formulate a “search
strategy” to locate this information
• After doing your search you can critically review
your results and use them to test your
hypothesis, provide evidence of wider reading,
or use the results to focus your topic.
Literature searching – The
Plan…
• Search strategy – think about your topic
• Identify appropriate information retrieval
resources
• Search, locate and retrieve references
• Read, analyse and evaluate
• Keep records for reference
• Further help…
Databases – not just data…
• Collection of information sources
(references)
• Lots of different types of database:
they service different types of information
books, articles, conference papers, theses,
standards etc….
– Bibliographic (summaries only) or full text
– General or subject specific
– Specialised e.g. British Standards
Bibliographic databases …
• … are indexes to journal articles,
conference proceedings, abstracts,
technical papers etc. e.g. Compendex and
CSA Illumina
• Typically, searching a database will
generate a list of references to articles
which may or may not be held in the
library – use another service to get the full
text of the article you want to access.
Important Bibliographic Databases
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/databases.php
Compendex
Compendex® is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary engineering
database in the world. Compendex contains over 8 million records and
references over 5,000 international engineering sources including
journal, conference, and trade publications. Coverage is from 1969 to
present and the database is updated weekly.
covers journals, proceedings, current contents,
journal citations, patents and chemical structures
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Scopus from Elsevier - the world’s largest abstract and indexing database.
Scopus is a multidisciplinary navigational tool that contains records going back
to the mid 1960s, offering newly-linked citations across the widest body of
scientific abstracts available in one place.
access to more than 50 databases covering major areas
of research …
Journal Papers
• Papers from refereed journals are high
quality sources of information which have
been checked for authenticity – they are
said to be Peer Reviewed
• You will need to include at least 6
examples of Peer Reviewed papers in
your dissertation.
Full Text On-Line Journals
The Library subscribes to many on-line full text academic journal
titles:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/ejs/ejshome.html
Important full text journal sources for Science and
Engineering include:
“one of the world's largest providers of scientific, technical
and medical (STM) literature”.
“quality full-text content plus a vehicle for finding precisely
the information needed — quickly and easily — among
hundreds of well respected sci-tech references”.
Most on-line services provide
e-mail alerts or e-tocs to advise you of a new
issue.
IEEE Xplore ®
A Dynamic Online Delivery System for IEEE Online
Publications
Everything Computing and more …
Comprehensive Science and Engineering content
PROCEEDINGS OF THE
INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL
ENGINEERS
Conference Proceedings
• There are thousands of conferences,
symposia, meetings and colloquia held
annually.
No one database covers all so try:
http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/
http://firstsearch.uk.oclc.org/WebZ/FSPrefs?entityjsdetect=:javascript=true:screen
size=large:sessionid=sp05sw01-60760-ds4it48x-c0vpz6:entitypagenum=1:0
http://portalt.wok.mimas.ac.uk/
Data & Datasets
• As Engineers you will need to use validated data:
Data services
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/hsheets/esdu.html
British Standards
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/hsheets/britstan.html
Statistics | Mapping
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
http://edina.ac.uk/digimap/index.shtml
If you need to look at another Thesis
use
Using the Internet for
Research
This can be broken down into several areas:
• The Web or World Wide Web for content
• E-mail lists, newsgroups, XML or weblogs
for current awareness.
Using the Internet as an
information resource
• Disadvantages:
Often no quality control (or can be
unclear / variable – e.g., relevance
ranking)
Information overload likely
Lack of organisation of results
Poor search tools?
Limited help available
Sources of Information
• Wide range of web-based search tools
available including;
Search engines
Metasearch engines
Weblogs/Blogging
Classified directories
Subject gateways
Customisable portals – e.g., RDN
Search engines (e.g. Google)
Disadvantages:
• The database may not be regularly
updated – “snapshot”
• There is no human “quality control” you will get a lot of irrelevant “hits”,
even if results ranked
• Importantly – you are not covering
whole WWW (Google Scholar FAQ)
• Search elsewhere (Invisible Web)
Search engines (e.g.Google)
• http://scholar.google.com/
Google Scholar – specific to academic needs - including
peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints,
abstracts and technical reports
• http://www.scirus.com
Sort of Google for Science & Engineering!
• http://www.eevl.ac.uk/
EEVL extra – Science Engineering and Maths
Best Search Engines To Use
• Phil Bradley: finding what you need to know
with the best search engines;
http://www.philb.com/whichengine.htm
• How to choose a search engine or directory
http://library.albany.edu/internet/choose.ht
ml
• Infopeople
http://www.infopeople.org/search
Searching sources more
effectively
• Boolean logic (AND, NOT, OR)
• Field searching
• Using advanced search features on
websites
• Improves high recall/high precision
ratio
• http://www.google.co.uk/advanced_search
?hl=en
• http://www.lboro.ac.uk/library/combining.html
Gateways …
• Created & maintained by subject experts who
evaluate web resources for quality and content.
Often contain extended abstracts.
Advantages:
• Assured quality information
• Allow you to avoid information overload
• Focused information in topic areas
• Often include contacts, lists of experts etc.
• Aimed specifically at academic community
• Well developed search and browse facilities
Gateways
Disadvantages:
• Stringent editorial control means number of
resources can be limited
• Not comprehensive
• Criteria for including sites is not always made
immediately available
• Often biased by country
• Use broader search terms than may be
desired due to small number of resources?
Engineering Gateways
http://www.eevl.ac.uk/engineering/index.htm
http://store.asme.org/
http://www.gogeo.ac.uk/
Gateways
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Artifact – arts & creative industries
BIOME – health, medicine & life sciences
EEVL – engineering, maths & computing
GEsource – geography & environment
HUMBUL – humanities
PSIgate - physical sciences
SOSIG – social sciences; includes sections on
statistics, research tools & methods;
http://www.sosig.ac.uk
• SAPLING – architecture, planning & landscape
Gateways – Current Awareness
• EEVL – Engineering –
http://www.eevl.ac.uk/latest-news.htm General news
http://www.eevl.ac.uk/current_awareness_services
.html - What’s new
http://www.eevl.ac.uk/onestepnews/ Industry news
Subject Portal
• Resource Discovery Network
http://www.rdn.ac.uk
Internet Portal which catalogues and
delivers value-added services e.g.,
interactive web tutorials, newsfeeds
and alerting services
Evaluation criteria for webbased information
• Who authored it? Academic or amateur?
Work published elsewhere in well-respected
titles? Individual or organisation?
• What? Reliability? Scope? Accuracy?
• Where is resource hosted?
• How structured? .mpeg, .pdf, .html security
concerns?
Internet - Keeping up to Date
Once you have discovered resources in your area you can have regular
updates sent to you via e-mail
– Tables of Contents from Zetoc
http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/alertguide.html
– Personal profiling e.g. Science Direct
Use RESIN!
use http://inhale.hud.ac.uk/79
Many databases provide this service
– Use current awareness web servers e.g. Research Buzz
– Use e-mail lists to collaborate with colleagues:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/
– Use blogging tools
http://www.lib.umd.edu/ENGIN/TechReports/Virtual-TechReports.html
Plagiarism – beware!
• If you use another persons work and pass it off
as your own you are cheating
• You MUST correctly cite any work you refer to
- http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/resin/citation_why.php
• You may be asked to submit your work to the
on-line plagiarism detection service.
The University is very strongly opposed to all
forms of cheating.
To find out about Plagiarism look at:
http://www.unn.ac.uk/central/isd/plaginfo.htm/
EndNote
• You’ll need to include a bibliography with your
dissertation or lab report
• EndNote is a reference manager which can
automatically download, format and export citations into
your favourite text processor e.g. Microsoft Word.
• You can follow a tutorial on how to use EndNote here:
– http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/pdf/EndNote7.pdf
Activities…
• Set up your ATHENS username and
password:
• User:
Password:
• Explore Online tutorials (cover various
information resources e.g. Compendex,
Science Direct, etc…)
http://informs.hud.ac.uk/perl/portfolio.pl?folio=79
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Instructions
Use the Internet Explorer browser
Log on to CSA Illumina
Choose a database (eg. ASFA) and search in the usual way
Using the checkboxes, put a tick beside the records you want to import into your EndNote library
Click on Save/Email/Print
Ensure that Records = Marked and Record Format = Complete Record
Choose appropriate File Format (PC or Mac)
Click on Save
Your refs will appear in a tagged format
Select File > Save as...
Choose a filename (eg. csarefs.txt) *** It is important that you use the .txt extension *** and
save the file
Now open the EndNote program and open your EndNote library
Select File > Import
Click on Choose File...
6 Select the correct text file (eg. csarefs.txt)
In the dropdown box beside Import Option, select Other Filters...
Scroll to find the appropriate filter (eg. ASFA (CSA) ) and click on Choose
Now click on Import
The references will be imported into your EndNote library.