Graduate Teacher Certification Seminar:

Facilitating Information Searches in the Sciences

Introduction to the UIUC Library Gateway

The Gateway Link

Find library materials on and off campus
Search for articles
Use electronic reference tools and full text resources

Steps for Finding Information on Your Topic

Step 1. Select and narrow your topic.

One of the most common mistakes made by college students is the failure to sufficiently narrow the topic of the paper. For example "environmental hazards" might be a good place to start, but the topic needs to be narrowed.

Another common mistake is to narrow the topic to the point that not enough material is available.

One strategy would be to search "environmental hazards", look at the material available, and then narrow the topic based on ideas gained from the original search.

Step 2. Choose your search terms.

Think of synonyms. You will add to your list as you search and evaluate your search results. Example:

You could also limit the topic to health concerns, or to a specific material such as chrysotile asbestos.

Step 3. Define your search strategy.

Your search strategy will partly depend on the search engine you use. One database may be available from a number of different vendors, each with its own search engine. For example, the GeoRef database is available from Silver Platter, Ovid, DIALOG, and other vendors, each having a unique search engine. Search engines are not yet standardized, and each will handle elements such as search operators (combining terms), truncation, and so forth differently. Consult the help functions for each search engine to ensure that you obtain the correct results.

• Basic Search Tools:
  • Search Operators (also called Boolean Operators): AND, OR, NOT (AND NOT, BUT NOT). (Some search engines require that these terms be capitalized, and some will take lower case.) These are used to connect search terms in order to widen or narrow the search. See figure .
    Examples: hazardous waste AND health; hazardous OR toxic OR pollution; asbestos NOT chrysotile

  • Truncation and Wildcards: *, #, +, !, ?, $, etc. These are used as substitutes for characters within search terms.
    Examples: hazard*; pollut*; colo*r
    Example of problem using truncation: rock* (returns rock and rocks, but also rockets, rockers, etc.)

  • Nesting: Tells the search engine the order to perform operations by using parentheses.
    Example: (mining OR tailing*) AND (hazard* OR toxic OR pollut*)

  • Phrases: Treated differently by the different search engines. With some search engines phrases must be enclosed in quotes.
    Example: "toxic waste"

  • Stop words: Avoid using common words such as "a", "the", "of" that are ususally not included in a search by the search engine. Stop words are treated differently by the different search engines. With some, they will be ignored; with others, they will cause an error.
    

  • There are other more advanced techniques that can help refine your search:
    

    • Fields: Some search engines, such as GeoRef, allow limiting the search to specific fields. This is useful when you are looking for very specific information. For example, "ashworth in au and 1998 in py" could be used to find an article by Ashworth, published in 1998, when you do not know any other information.

    • Adjacency: How close words must be within text. Treated differently by the different search engines.
      

• Example of a complex search strategy using Boolean operators, truncation and nesting with GeoRef:
  

  ground*water and (mining or mines or tailing*) and (hazard* or toxic* or pollut*) and (model* or simulation)

Step 4. Choose your database

In some ways, your choice of database will limit your search. For example, if you are interested in the health effects of chrysotile asbestos, searching "chrysotile asbestos" in a medical database such as PubMed will automatically limit the type of information you find.

Article Databases (Complete List)

Engineering Village (Compendex, INSPEC, NTIS)
Academic Search Premier (EBSCO)
Expanded Academic (Infotrac)
PubMed
GeoRef

Selected Database Descriptions:

Engineering Village

Compendex Plus/EI Compendex [Engineering Index]

• Provides international coverage of engineering and technical literature. This database is used to find articles, conference papers, and technical reports published since 1980.

  INSPEC

• INSPEC provides access to the world's leading scientific and technical literature in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computers and computing, and information technology. The INSPEC database offers access to international journal articles, conference proceedings, reports, dissertations and books.

  
  NTIS

• US Government technical reports
  

Searching:

• Boolean Operators available:
  AND, OR, NOT
• Truncation:
  • ?: Can be used at the end, or within a term.
    Example: colo?r returns documents with either color or colour.
  • *: A multi-character wildcard

PubMed

• Free public access (your tax dollars at work)
• Deals primarily with medical and biological research since mid-1960's; some coverage of other sciences
• Part of wider NCBI site including medical information such as OMIM, bioinformatics databases and tools
• Full-text links to some articles (depending on local availability)
• Thorough documentation available on site (click on "help" link in left-hand bar)
• Searching:
  • Automatic Term Mapping: "Unqualified terms that are entered in the query box are matched (in this order) against a MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) Translation Table, a Journals Translation Table, a Phrase List, and an Author Index." Citations with the subject headings, journal title, etc. are returned. The input terms are also used to search citation titles and abstracts as text words.
    
  • Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT (enter in upper case). When searching text words, terms are "ANDed" together by default.
    
  • Truncation: Unlimited: use *
    
  • Phrases: automatically recognizes some phrases; can specify phrase search by containing in " " marks.
    
  • Nesting: is used

Expanded Academic Index (InfoTrac)

• Database includes a wide range of academic journals, trade, and news magazines
• Full-text links to some articles (depending on local availability)
• Help available on site (click on "help" link in left-hand bar)
• Searching:
  • Subject, Keyword, and Relevance (results ranked by frequency of keyword use) searches available
    
  • Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT (enter in upper case).
    
  • Truncation:
    • Unlimited: * (anywhere within term)
      
    • Limited:
      ? (replaces one character, so gr?y searches for both grey and gray)
      ! (stands for one or zero characters, so colo!r searches for both color and colour)
  • Adjacency: Automatically searches for two terms within two words in either direction. To change this default: Wn: "The W (within) operator specifies that the word that follows the operator must occur within n words after the word that precedes the operator for record to match." Nn: "The N (near) operator specifies that the words on either side of the operator must occur within n words of each other in either direction for a record to match.
    
  • Nesting: is used

GeoRef

• Indexes geological information published from 1700's to present; includes government documents.
• Searching:
  • Boolean: and, or, not
  • Truncation: *
  • Nesting: is used
  • Fields: "in ti de ab"; "in au"; "in py"
    
• Example of a complex search strategy using Boolean operators, truncation and nesting with GeoRef:
  

  ground*water and (mining or mines or tailing*) and (hazard* or toxic* or pollut*) and (model* or simulation)

  • ground*water will search both ground water and groundwater.
    
  • min* would not work because it would search for mineral, minimum, etc., not just mines and mining.
    
  • tailing* searches for singular and plural.
    
  • hazard* seaches for hazard, hazards, and hazardous.
    
  • toxic* searches for toxic and toxicology.
    
  • pollut* searches for pollution, pollutants, polluting, etc.
    
  • model* searches for model, models, modelling, modelled.
    

  • This search could be conducted in steps. For example:
    • First, search: ground*water, resulting in 140,205 hits.
    • Then search: #1 and (chemi* or geochem*), resulting in 36,072 hits.
    • Then search: #2 and (hazard* or toxic* or pollut*), resulting in 13,413 hits.
    • Then continue adding search sets, finially ending with 245 hits, or continue to narrow the search.
    • Searching in sets helps you understand the results. For example, if you end up with zero hits, there may be a typographical error. You may expand or narrow your search after any step. Searching with one string of text can be faster, but searching in steps gives more control.

 

• U.S. Government Documents (GPO Monthly Catalog; MoCat)
• The Catalog of United States Government Publications indexes print and electronic information published by Federal agencies. Many of these publications are distributed through the Federal Depository Library Program. The Catalog via paid subscription contains records from 1976 to present. A free index contains records generated since January 1994 and is updated daily. A print index, Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications, contains earlier information.

Publications of the U.S. Geological Survey:

• USGS Publications Warehouse - many with links to full text; searchable

Step 5. Conduct your search

Step 6. Evaluate search results. You may find additional key words to use, or terms you want to remove from your search.

Step 7. Refine search and re-do.

Step 8. Find out whether UIUC has the material; if not, use Interlibrary Loan.

• To find out whether UIUC has a particular book, use the online catalog.
  
  • If UIUC doesn't have what you need, use the online catalog to find out if one of the other libraries in the state of Illinois has it. You can directly request circulating material held at these institutions without going through the Interlibrary Borrowing Office.

  • If none of the Illinois state libraries have the material, use Interlibrary Loan.

  • Make sure you leave plenty of time to receive material through Interlibrary Loan!

• For journals:
  • Use the online catalog to find the call number. You can use the ISSN number from database output (For example, the "IS" field in GeoRef).
    

  • Check the Full Text Electronic Journals pages.

  • If an article is not available at UIUC in print or online, you will need to use Interlibrary Loan to get it. Most libraries will not loan whole journals, so you will get a copy of the individual articles.

Home Pages of Sciences and Engineering Libraries:

Complete List of UIUC Libraries


Selected Examples:

Biology Library
Chemistry Library
Geology Library Home Page
Grainger Engineering Library
Physics and Astronomy Library

Created 02/12/02
lej lga krm