Basic Searching Skills

This will cover the fundamentals of literature searching, from planning a search strategy to conducting basic searches and retrieving the materials you find.

By the end of the tutorial, you will be able to:

• Identify keywords on a topic and begin to build a search strategy
• Distinguish between keyword and subject searching, for both catalogue and database searches
• Use database limiters to narrow or broaden search results
• Identify general article databases, and ones in your subject area
• Discuss reasons for choosing subject databases

Examples will be given in a variety of subject areas, to illustrate the principles and ideas presented.  Any references to the library catalogue are referring to the Advanced Search option.

The tutorial is divided into eleven sections:

• The Value of Planning
• The Planning Process
• Concept Mapping
• Keeping a Search Log
• Keyword Searching in the Catalogue
• Subject Heading Searching in the Catalogue
• Criteria for Choosing Article Databases
• Identifying Article Databases
• Keyword and Subject Searching in Article Databases
• Working with Search Results
• Retrieving Journal Articles

Before going through the material in these sections, you should be familiar with the content in Introduction to Library Research at Western.

Go to The Value of Planning
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