Welcome to your Education Library Christmas!

Researching around the @EdFacLib tree – have a happy holiday!

The Faculty will be closed from 24th December – 3rd January but fear not! The Education Library Elves have been hard at work to make sure you still have our virtual support, with 24/7 access to the Library Moodle site. 

Put your feet up, sit in front of the fire, eat a mince pie and browse the shelves of our Online Education Library of ebooks – organised by subject but searchable too! 

When you are sitting back and mulling over your research project or wondering how you’ll find more material on your subject, take a look at our advice on searching for ebooks or journal articles. 

Our Research Methods Guide will introduce you to ebooks, journal articles and to other literature on different methodologies. 

If you are pondering how to cite that quote from your favourite Christmas story, just pop to our Referencing Guide and find the answer. 

Got any questions? You might find the answers in our FAQs section.   

If you’re looking to borrow books from the Education Library before the Faculty Christmas closure, use our Click & Collect service! You can place a request until Wednesday 16^th December, last date for collection is on Friday 18^th December (before 5pm).

If you need 1:1 support in literature searching, referencing or using Zotero, don’t forget that you can Click & Connect with your Library Elves! Bookings are available until 5pm on Tuesday 22^nd December. 

Your Education Library Team wish you a very happy Christmas break and we look forward to connecting with you again in the New Year! 

Presenting our Faculty Publications – Box of Festive Delights

A year in the Education Library…

Looking back over the last year of service in the Education Library it genuinely seems amazing that we’ve got through it all! Between staffing problems and strikes and Covid (oh my!) it’s been a genuine adventure figuring out how to put the pieces together to provide a professional, approachable service for the Education Faculty.

We wanted to take a look back at some of the challenges we have faced over the last year, when essentially we have provided an embedded service for half the year in person, and half the year online, with some of the feedback we’ve received this year along the way.

Half in person…

“You guys have been real life savers throughout the year and the library has been the perfect little bubble in which to focus on my studies.” – PGCE student

Reading Lists: The Education Library supports seven different programmes within the Faculty, each with multiple courses, and a big part of this is the summer work in organising reading lists for the coming year. Starting at the end of June, the Library Team researches, updates and creates over 100 reading lists from across the Faculty for the coming academic year. Unlike most faculties, our Michaelmas Term starts in early September with the incoming PGCE Teacher Trainer cohort of over 300 students.

“…an exemplar of an inclusive approach…” – Head of DRC  

In order to make material accessible to every student, whether they are full-time, part-time or studying at a distance, for several years the Library Team has worked closely with academics to ensure that nearly all core readings are accessible electronically — a practice which has proved invaluable during the pandemic. However, the start of 2019-2020 had a few additional piquancies. Changes in the library catalogue meant that many of the thousands of entries in the reading lists had to be changed again AND 1/3 of the Library Team went on maternity leave with uncertainties over cover for their positions! Meaning we started the year with a big question mark around what services we could provide at all.

“I think you (and your colleagues) are doing an amazing job. Many thanks for your time and the care you are taking over [organising reading lists]! Good luck with the other 100 lists!” – Academic staff

New Staff: Luckily, the two positions were filled, and we were able to start the year with a full team! It meant that 1/3 of us were getting trained/up to speed during Michaelmas–the busiest term of the year–but with a lot of long hours and dedication from the entire team we were able to provide a seamless service to our staff and students.

“Just wanted to note how much we appreciate the positive and supportive attitude of the Faculty of Education library staff. I’ve never found its equal anywhere.” – PhD student

Teaching and Inductions: The Library Team were kept busy throughout our time in the Faculty this year, leading over 60 group teaching sessions for students! In addition, we conducted at least another 65 follow-up 1-2-1 appointments with both academic staff and students on referencing and literature searching through our range of resources. Our offer of individual support continues even at a distance, adapting our 1-2-1 in-person service to digital sessions.

“Thank you so very much for the session this afternoon. It was fabulously useful. I’ve been wondering around since with the “I WISH I HAD KNOWN THAT FOR MY MASTERS!’ feeling. […] Thank you. It’s made such a difference to my approach to my subject already.” – EdD student

Half online…

“Once more, the Education Library have shown what a brilliant service they are. Their rapid shift to many more on-line sources and resources has enabled our students the kind of access they need to produce outstanding work. Thank you  Education Library Team from the Faculty of Education!” – Professor Susan Robertson, Head of Faculty

Closing the Library: Between the union strikes during the year and the pandemic, it feels like even for our full-time students we have been running a distance service for at least half the year. Updating our “Digital Library” through the Moodle Site was vital as all of our students became distance learners! We have changed resources and recommendations to re-centre on online resources, expanding our LibGuides and creating new sections to specifically support different forms of dissertations, research methods, as well as online teaching & learning during lockdown.

“…library resources, information and guidance into the very centre of the Faculty’s presence in Moodle…with specific sections for the courses and then generic sections for research, literature review and other guidance.” – Teaching & Learning Systems Team Leader UIS

Needless to say, our distance requests for support have been higher than ever!

“I really don’t know what I would do without you. I am so bad at referencing but you have been a wonderful teacher . Thank you so much!!” – MPhil student

Ebook purchases: In the past year the Library Team received over 700 requests to purchase new material from staff and students! Nearly 400 of these requests were ultimately purchased as ebooks, and added to our Online Education Library. The Online Library has been something the Team has been building and organising for years to support distance and part-time students, but has been an invaluable resource while we plan for teaching to be conducted online.

“This is a brilliantly helpful initiative!” – Head of the Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning

During the past 4 months we have continued to use our specialised subject knowledge to assess purchase requests for new material in Education on behalf of our Faculty and the University Library — to find the best and most relevant titles for purchase where possible, and researching and recommending similar resources when not. A lot of staff hours and professional expertise goes into expanding our Online Library with high-quality resources, making it easy to use whatever course or research our Faculty members are engaged in.

“Thanks so much for all the support you have provided us students in this time. The ebooks list is absolutely fantastic!” – PhD student

Emails & LibChat: The Library Team email has never exactly been a quiet place. But losing one team member leaving just before lockdown, and the move to providing an entirely online service, it seems to have kept us on our toes more than ever before. In the past week alone we’ve responded to over 200 emails (and this has been a relatively quiet week)!  During lockdown, we have also launched a trial of the LibAnswers App, LibChat. We have had incredibly positive responses from staff and students on both services, and it has certainly been a way to continue maintaining our drop-in service for the Faculty community while we are all working remotely. It’s again through the long-hours and dedication of our team that we have helped our Faculty keep pace with the demand of their learning and research over the last months.

‘Thank you for all of your lovely emails during this challenging time. Thank you again for all your support throughout my three years here. I was very much looking forward to the afternoon cake parties in Easter term and I will treasure the memories I have of the library.” – Undergraduate student

 

Coming full circle….

‘Thank you again for your amazing support so far. You have been so helpful with all my requests. We are really lucky at the Edu Faculty to have you as our librarians!’ – PhD student

It’s that time again where we are receiving new reading lists every week for the coming year. The team is hard at work sourcing new and existing online resources to support full learning online, which for us begins in September, not to mention the volume of queries from graduate students getting ready to hand in!

Funnily enough, we are yet again facing staff insecurities going into the new academic year, this time with the possibility of operating our service with only half the team. It’s a prospect we’re not looking forward to — not only because we may lose some wonderful colleagues who have been invaluable in supporting Faculty students, staff and researchers throughout 2019-20 — but because sadly we will have to rationalise the services we currently provide to over 1,000 students, and more than 100 academic and research staff and which are so highly valued by our Faculty.

‘The Education Faculty Library provides an excellent service and facilitates the study experiences of all of its students and staff members. Having completed my undergraduate, PGCE and currently my MEd at the Faculty, I can’t but emphasise the importance of having a library and a library team that provide high-quality and specialised services. […] I think the Education Faculty stands out among the Cambridge libraries due to the quality of support given to all students and the wonderful team that always goes the extra mile to make learning an enjoyable and high-quality experience for all.’ – MEd Student

 

Providing an Online Education Library Service

Like so many other libraries, we were devastated when our physical library closed, because of the strong ties we have with our Education community of students, lecturers and researchers. But we found some comfort in the fact that supporting students remotely was not entirely new. For the Education Library it was a matter of shifting our energies to support the online library we were already running. 

A large proportion of our research and student Education community have full-time jobs, or permanently live some distance away from Cambridge. Nearly half of the nine different degree routes we support fall under this category, including a yearly cohort of approximately 300 teacher trainees. So even when we have full access to all the resources of our Library, one of our ongoing goals is finding the best ways for everyone to be able to access the information they need. Over many years, we have developed our Library Moodle site to be a one-stop digital library, providing a portal to reading lists, ebooks and LibGuides tailored to suit the individual needs of our varied user groups. Our development of this site has been a constant self-reflective process, affecting so many of our day-to-day operating decisions, from acquisitions to reading lists to communications. 

These are some of the provisions we have already included: 

• A searchable index of ebooks, curated by subject knowledge of the different teaching programmes, updated nearly daily with new purchases 
• Reading lists for each course, with links to the digital editions of core readings 
• A Referencing Guide showing the correct style for in-text citations and reference list formation for commonly used and obscure resources in line with Faculty guidance, along with advice for setting up our supported referencing software 
• A tailored Research Methods Libguide, with links to ebooks and online journal articles for different areas of inquiry, currently being updated to reflect new forms of course assessment 
• A Literature Searching LibGuide with step-by-step guidance in systematic approaches to literature searching of Education bibliographic databases 

 

Because of the distributed nature of our Faculty community, the Education Library is often a touchstone for communication and inclusion. We use multi-level approaches to information distribution including Faculty mailing lists, targeted group messaging through Moodle, social media promotions, explanations through the blog and text messaging to groups. By layering how we communicate we are usually able to deliver a strategy which means all students have access to the information.  

Our experience in supporting distance students and researchers has taught us that libraries are far more than just a room full of books. Our efforts to support our Education community are required to be critical, iterative and self-reflective, because the people we support are. Everything we do is being revised to make sure that it is the best we can offer our community, but that is actually business as usual. We are still a library service. An online library service.  

 

Let’s talk about…..Electronic Legal Deposit

The Education Library works throughout the year to support distance students and researchers. Part of this is answering emails about materials only available in the Library, such as Electronic Legal Deposit (ELD).

Like, A LOT of emails about Electronic Legal Deposit.

So let’s take a few minutes to talk about ELD and try to answer your questions.

If you are not familiar with them, Electronic Legal Deposit (ELD) resources look like the above entry on iDiscover.  As a Legal Deposit Library, the Cambridge University Library is able to claim a single copy of any book published within the British Isles. This is fairly straight forward with physical material, and the Copyright Agency in Edinburgh was set-up by the Legal Deposit libraries (the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth and Trinity College Library in Dublin) to organise receiving physical material. The University of Cambridge is the only UK Library which allows its physical Legal Deposit materials to be borrowed!

However, not all materials are deposited physically, and that’s where Electronic Legal Deposit comes in. Under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, in combination with the passing of the Legal Deposit (Non-Print Works) Regulations in 2013, publishers can now deposit publications electronically.

However, the same restrictions which are in place for physical material are in place for electronic material. This entails things like controlling access and replication of the material. Or, why access to ELD material is restricted to being available to only one reader at a time, the percentage of the material which you can print, and why it is only accessible from designated computers in the Cambridge Libraries.

It is part of the legislation that the material can only be accessed by computers physically controlled by the Legal Deposit Library. Which is why Legal Deposit access computers are available in most Faculty libraries, but not in College libraries: because College libraries are governed by the College and not by the University Library.

It is also part of the legislation that no digital copies of the material can be made, which is why we can’t download a chapter and email the PDF. Material can’t be downloaded to the computers at all, and it is illegal to take pictures of the computer screen with ELD material on it.

This is also why, no matter what the current circumstances are, or whether you are usually a distance student, the ELD material can’t just be ‘opened up’ for access outside of the libraries. ELD material is stored in servers managed by the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, and the British Library, and not controlled by the Cambridge University Library. There isn’t a way for it to be ‘opened up’ for distance access. Even if the Library did have control of the servers, it would still be illegal to do so.

You can read more about searching Electronic Legal Deposit on our ‘Top Tips‘ and ‘When is an ebook not an ebook?‘.  You can also read more on ELD on the UL’s Electronic Legal Deposit Libguide.

However, if the resources you are looking for are only available in ELD format, that doesn’t mean you are without hope! On the Library Moodle Site you can find an extensive Online Library of Education ebooks accessible from anywhere in the world via your RAVEN password. You can search by author or title, or browse sections by subject. You can read more about the Online Education Library via our blog post.  Chances are even if we don’t have a particular book, we probably have something like it.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for (or something similar) in the Online Education Library then just go to the Library Moodle site and click on the green box which says Request an ebook for purchase.  We will investigate availability and price and get back to you as soon as we can.

 

We’re here to support our Education community.❤ 📚💻

 

Your Online Education Library

Did you know that Education Library organises our ebooks similarly to how we organise books on the library shelves?

It’s true!

Every time we purchase an ebook for one of our delightful staff or students, we add it to an online subject index that can be accessed through the Library Moodle Site. Some sections, like Children’s Literature and Research Methods, are so large that we subdivided them to make it easier to navigate. The same book can show up in multiple sections where we think they are relevant (we never get to do THAT in the Library).

So even though you are working from a distance, and many of our Education students and PGCE trainees always have been, you can still find the books you need from the library!

What do we already have?

We have plenty of student-favourites like:

• Cohen, L. (2017). Research Methods in Education (8th. ed.). London: Routledge.
  Found in Research Methods – Education Research section
• Bell, J. (2018) Doing your research project (7th ed.) Maidenhead: Open University Press
  Found in Research Methods – Beginning Your Research Project section
• Daniels, H. (2016) (2nd ed.) Vygotsky and pedagogy. London: Taylor & Francis
  Found in Psychology of Education section
• Watson, V. (2000) Reading series fiction. London: Routledge.
  Found in Children’s Literature – Series Fiction section
• Milanovic, B. (2016) Global Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
  Found in Globalisation section
• Morrow, R. A. & Torres, C. A. (1995) Social theory and education. New York: SUNY Press
  Found in Sociology of Education section
• And many, many more!

New ebooks are being added to the library almost daily!

The Online Library is your go-to place for Education ebooks, and your Library Team is working hard within our budget to make sure you have all the resources you need.

Still not finding relevant material?

Have you checked the Education databases?

You have access to databases like ERIC, BEI and many more. You can find Literature Searching guidance on the Library Moodle Site, or even check out our previous blog posts on Literature Searching Q&As.

With your Online Library, you have access to high-quality academic material to support your research from anywhere in the world. And you still have access to your Education Library Team.

Any problems? You can always email us at library@educ.cam.ac.uk and follow our Twitter, blog and Instagram for library updates.

 

XOXO – Your Education Library Team

 

Closed, But Not Gone.

We have tried to be in contact with all of our staff and students about the Education Library. Following the Vice-Chancellor’s message on 18 March, the University libraries were all closed to students from 5pm on that day.

We were happy to see all of the students who came to get last minute books in the very few hours we had between the message and closing our doors. But more than anything we want to convey to anyone who is now worried about this closure that while we will not be operating in our physical library for the foreseeable future, you still have access to your Lovely Education Library Team, and all the support we can give you through our Digital Library.

If there is anything we can do to help with your studies, we are here at the other end of every email to library@educ.cam.ac.uk, through the Library text messages, and through our social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram. Email, text, tweet, don’t hesitate to get in contact with any questions.

In the meantime, here are a few things we are doing:

• The Library Moodle Site is still your go-to place for distance resources and guides. We’re constantly updating it to be accessible and relevant to your needs!
• We are not recalling any books. We have no place for you to send them anyway. But if there’s a book you need access to, fill in the ‘Recall a book’ form on the Library Moodle Site and we will look into purchasing an ebook if one exists.
• We’ve made suggesting ebooks for purchase easier than ever! There is a box at the top of the Library Moodle Site to ‘Request an ebook for purchase’. We’ll do our best to either get it for you, or recommend something similar that you already have access to.
• Re-vamping our 1-2-1s. We’re not sure what this is going to look like yet, but our goal is to support you and your studies, however that looks like. Get in touch if you have any ideas, questions, or just need a good librarian chat.
• Problems finding a journal article? Just get in touch, same as always, and we’ll see what we can do!

Obviously everything we know about courses, terms and submissions is uncertain. There are many things we are all worrying about at the moment. But we’re still here so that resource access doesn’t necessarily have to be one of them.

Stay safe. Keep your spirits up. Let us know how we can help.

We miss all of our lovely students already.

 

XOXO – Your Education Library Team

 

Literature Searching Q&A #4 Evaluate & Manage

Welcome to the fourth edition of our blog series about literature searching using online bibliographic databases!

We have an in-depth Library Guide (click here to access through the Library Moodle site in the Library Guides section), which includes information on how to plan your search, tips for effective searching, a list of recommended databases and more! Through this series we wanted to answer some frequently asked questions, so we hope you will find this Q&A a useful addition to the guide.

 

EVALUATE

How can I ensure I am finding the best articles/journals?

One of the advantages of using a bibliographic database is that they index high quality (often peer reviewed) material so you can be sure that you are accessing material that is suitable to use for your studies.  If you are careful in planning your search and ensure you select appropriate search terms, you should achieve relevant results.

Some journals also have impact factors which are generated from the average number of times articles published within a particular journal title have been cited.  Altmetric scores also provide an indication of citation but both should be used with caution as articles can be cited numerous times because they are a particularly bad example of research!  More information is available on the Evaluate section of the Searching for Journal Articles tab of the Literature Searching Guide.

How do I judge the usefulness of the articles once I have found them?

Once you have found articles on the database, there are a number of methods for determining how relevant they are to your own research before fully reading the article. Look at the key words which come up with the article title. Are any of those red flags that this isn’t relevant? Next read the Abstract. Is there any reason you shouldn’t read it? In the beginning it is normal to read quite a bit, as you need to cover quite a broad area to be able to determine what is and is not relevant to your research. Critical evaluation skills will develop with this reading. It is good to bear in mind that some of the key elements of a Literature Search are Revisiting Search Results, and Refining the search based on what you find. You can see guidance on the process of Literature Searching in the Guide on the Library Moodle Site.

 

MANAGE

How can I keep track of the references I find?

The best way to keep track of your citations is to use reference management software. The Faculty recommends using Zotero, which can be freely downloaded. You can organise your references into folders and tag them with topics, as well as saving PDFs. It will then format your in-text citations and bibliography into APA referencing style when you come to writing. You can find more information on downloading and using Zotero in the Manage section of the Searching for Journal Articles tab on the Literature Searching Guide.

ACCESS

How do I open the article?

Some databases (such as ERIC) include the full text, for any other references use the ejournals@cambridge link to check whether there is online access to a particular article.  In some cases, material may not be available online but may be held in print in one of the libraries in Cambridge.

 

HELP

More advice, and step-by-step examples can be found on the Literature Searching Guide on the Library Moodle site. But if you are struggling to find relevant articles, or figuring out search strategies, or even to access articles once you find them, please don’t think you have to struggle alone. You can email the library team with any questions at library@educ.cam.ac.uk, or book a 1-2-1 session through the Library Moodle site.

 

Like this blog? Make sure to check out the previous blog posts in this series on General Questions, Planning your search, and Searching! 

Literature Searching Q&A #3 Search

Welcome to the third edition of our blog series about literature searching using online bibliographic databases!

We have an in-depth Library Guide (click here to access through the Library Moodle site in the Library Guides section), which includes information on how to plan your search, tips for effective searching, a list of recommended databases and more! Through this series we wanted to answer some frequently asked questions, so we hope you will find this Q&A a useful addition to the guide.

What is Boolean logic?

Using Boolean logic when searching databases enables you to connect your search terms together to narrow or broaden your search results. The three basic Boolean operators are AND, OR and NOT.  Use OR to combine synonyms of related terms and ideas together.  Use NOT to exclude terms which may have a different meaning or relevancy to those for which you are searching. Use AND to combine sets of synonym searches to find material which contains both. See the diagram below for an example of using OR and AND:

How do I enter my search terms in a database?

Having a systematic approach to searching will enable you to retrieve relevant references for your research. You can do this by searching for each concept in your research question separately, using groupings of identified synonyms. Then, combine these sets of individual terms together using Boolean logic, as illustrated above. This allows you greater control over the search terms and the ability to modify the results to best suit your inquiry.

Following the example in the diagram above:

• First – search the database for terms related to ‘Ability Grouping’ – use a thesaurus to help you if one is included in the database (BEI, ERIC and PsychINFO all include a thesaurus).  Terms selected from a thesaurus will automatically be combined using the OR operator; if you are identifying your own synonyms ensure you use OR to combine them together.
• Second – carry out a separate search for concepts related to ‘Mathematics Education’ and combine them together using the OR operator – don’t worry, the previous search will automatically have been saved by the database.
• Third – combine the two searches with the AND operator to find the intersection between the two sets of references.

This should produce a set of relevant results, i.e. journal articles about  both concepts.

I haven’t found enough articles, how can I broaden my search?

If your search produces too few results, then try to broaden the scope of your search by broadening your topic. You can do this either by adding more synonyms to your search or by going back to the thesaurus and selecting broader terms. For example, when searching for ‘Autistic Education’ also include broader language, such as ‘Special Educational Needs’ and its acronym ‘SEN’. This will retrieve results which may be still relevant to your research question, but may not be covered by the original choice of narrower search terms.  Another option is to use truncation to increase the number of results; for example, search for educat* to include all the different endings of the word in your search (e.g. education, educational, educating, etc).

 

I have found too many articles, how can I narrow my search?

There are several ways to narrow down a search. You can alter the initial synonym search by choosing more specific language from the thesaurus – narrower terms. For example, searching for ‘Music Education’ (narrower term) instead of ‘Arts Education’ (broader term). You could also add another synonym search. For example, in the diagram above, the search is combining ‘Ability Grouping’ AND ‘Mathematics Education’. If you were specifically interested in Primary Mathematics Education you could add another synonym search for age-related topics. See the diagram below:

Another way to narrow your results further would be to limit the date range of the results, for example to articles published in the last 10 years.

 

What if these articles don’t seem relevant for my research?

You may need to rethink your search terms and conduct different combinations of searches to ensure you get the most relevant results. It may be necessary to broaden the search terms you are using, before narrowing it down with cross-searches. If the database you are using has a thesaurus, it can be useful to look at how the terms you are using have been defined for that database. If you are having problems finding relevant material you can always book a 1-2-1 session with a member of the Library Team via the Moodle site.

Are there any hints & tips for searching?

* Don’t try to combine too many sets of terms in any one search with AND – the more sets you use, the narrower your search will be and the greater the risk of there being no hits at all. Combining 2 or 3 sets is usually best.

* If there are no suitable terms in the thesaurus (many newer terms aren’t) you can search for your own term in the Title Field of the Advanced Search box.  If it consists of more than one word, remember to enclose the term in speech marks. You can then check the subject terms (i.e. thesaurus terms) for the article references you find and use those to search further.

* Look at the list of subject headings in relevant articles and make a note of any that look interesting or relevant for use in subsequent searches.

* Check the references at the end of any relevant article you find – some databases provide links to the references and also to articles which have cited the paper you’re interested in.

Does every database work in the same way?

You can find specific guidance on searching different databases on the Literature Searching Guide, but the databases highlighted there all work in very similar ways using the Boolean operators covered here.

Note that the coverage and thesaurus terms can differ between databases, so it is important to remember to modify your terminology when you are searching depending on which database you are using.

What is the benefit of setting up an account on the databases?

Creating an account is useful for saving searches, as it allows you to keep track of the search terms you have used and then to rerun these searches to check for any additional new publications.

 

For more information on searching for journal articles go to our Literature Searching guide, click on the ‘Searching for Journal Articles’ tab near the top of the web page and select ‘Search’ in the drop down menu or in the ‘Literature Searching Cycle box’. Click here to access the guide via the Library Moodle site, found in the Library Guides box.

 

 

---

Did you find this helpful? Check out our previous blogs in the series on Database FAQs: General questions and  Planning your search. Watch this space for the final installment next week, Evaluating Search Results!

 

Literature Searching Q&A #2 Planning your search

Welcome to the second edition of our blog series about literature searching using online bibliographic databases!

We have an in-depth Library Guide (click here to access through the Library Moodle site in the Library Guides section), which includes information on how to plan your search, tips for effective searching, a list of recommended databases and more! Through this series we wanted to answer some frequently asked questions, so we hope you will find this Q&A a useful addition to the guide.

Which databases will be of most use to me and how do I access them? 

There is a list of databases, including their broad subject coverage, in the Databases – quick access tab on the Literature Searching Guide.  The table below outlines information about the coverage of each database, which you might find useful.  Remember that you will probably need to search more than one database to find the literature you need.

How do I plan my search?

Identifying the different concepts of your research and selecting the correct terminology are two of the most important aspects of literature searching.  Typing your entire research question into a database isn’t going to return many results so it’s important to think about what you are looking for and how you can describe this before you start searching.

Let’s look at the following example…

Investigate the effects of ability grouping of primary school pupils within a mathematics class.

There are three clear concepts within this statement: ability grouping, primary education and mathematics.  For each of these three concepts you will need to think of all the different ways in which these concepts are described.  Remember to take into account spelling variations, acronyms and abbreviations. Alternatively, you could use an online thesaurus to identify subject terms used in the database.

Databases operate using Boolean logic: OR is the command used to combine synonyms together; AND is the command to use when crossing different concepts together.

Several bibliographic databases also have a thesaurus, which is list of ‘controlled’ or defined subject terms used in that database to index articles, or in other words, to describe their subject content.  A thesaurus will also situate a term in relationship to other terms so that any term you look up may have a ‘broader term’, ‘narrower terms’, and/or ‘related terms.  This can help you to identify the most appropriate terms to use for your search.

It is useful to remember that many of the databases cover topics in multiple English-language journals, so there may be different ways of expressing something which means the same thing. In the search above, for example, there is listed the American phrase ‘Elementary Education’ in a search string, as well as the British ‘Primary Education’.

For more examples of planning a search and a search preparation form click on the ‘Searching for Journal Articles’ tab near the top of the Literature Searching guide. Then select ‘Plan’ in the drop down menu or in the ‘Literature Searching Cycle box’. Click here to access the guide via the Library Moodle site, found in the Library Guides box.

 

Did you find this helpful? Be sure to check out part 1 of this series on general FAQs when searching databases, and check this space next week for part 3 on tips for searching!