classics information research skills for projects and dissertations

Library Services

Academic Skills: Information & Research Skills for Dissertationslibguides.rhul.ac.uk/

November 2013

Russell Burke

Library Services

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Aims of the session

• Overview of Library Services available to support your essay research

• Step 1 - Plan and prepare a literature search

• Step 2 - Use LibrarySearch and subject specific resources to find information

• Step 3 – Adapt & refine your searches

• Step 4 - Manage your references (& generate bibliographies using RefWorks)

• Access eresources off-campus

• Using other libraries

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My essay question / research topic:

What do I want to find out?

Library Services

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Developing your search strategy

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“How Athenian democracy worked in the fifth century BCE.”

Main concepts Alternative terms1. Athens Athenian …

2. Democracy Democratic system, Political system, Government

3 fifth century BCE Before Common Era, 5th Century, BC ….

Step One: Think about your own research topic & related concepts and write down the keywords that you need to search for

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Now that I know what I want to find out:

What resources would I use?

See part 1 of the following prezi for an overview of the types of material available via the

Library:

http://prezi.com/24tl5r36eel5/developing-your-search-skills/

Library Services

Selecting information sources

Library Subject Guides: libguides.rhul.ac.uk/

Online databases (eresources): libguides.rhul.ac.uk/Databases

LibrarySearch: librarysearch.rhul.ac.uk

Senate House Library catalogue (& eresources): ull.ac.uk

Other internet resources…

These can also be found on the main Library webpage

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Why can’t I just use Google?

Evaluating information sources:

http://prezi.com/q5jglgamre6c/evaluating-information/

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Step 2: Use your Library Subject Guide and select the resources or types of resources you think you would need to use to carry out your research

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Now that I know what I want to find out & where to find the resources:

How do I carry out searches to find

information on my topic?

(By combining your search terms in meaningful way!)

See your Library Subject Guide > Training > Searching for videos & more help

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Combining keywords - AND

Narrow your search using AND (useful if you have too many results)

e.g. Virgil AND pathos

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Results containing VIRGIL

Results containing

BOTH TERMS

Results containing

PATHOS

ie. only brings back results where all the words searched for are included somewhere in the title, summary and/or full-text

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Combining keywords - too few results?

Broaden your search using OR (useful if you have too few results)

e.g. role OR function

13ie. brings back results where any the words searched for are included somewhere in the title, summary and/or full-text

Library Services

Making the most of synonyms

As well as searching for alternative terms, you can use wildcard characters ($ ? * -) to replace letters in search terms or to truncate a term:

Examples

theat* - finds theatre, theater, theatrical, etc.

wom*n - finds women, woman.

NB: Help pages in the online resources will explain which character is used as the wildcard

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Combining keywords – phrase searching

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“Greek tragedy”

“Fifth Century BCE”

Use quotation (speech) marks to search for phrases where word need to appear next to each other (e.g. specific terminology, title of books / films, names & places).

Step three: think about how you will combing keywords and enter your search queries in your selected eresources (adjusting terms as you need to)

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Now that I have found information on my topic:

How do I know that it is what I want and good

quality material?(see the ‘Evaluating information sources’

link mentioned above)

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Reviewing & evaluating your research

Do you have enough / too

much information

?

Is it relevant to

your research?

Does it answer the

whole question?

Is the information

current / within the date you require

Do you need to review

your underlying research question?

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Now that I have the information (books, chapters, journal

articles, webpages etc) that I need:

How do I manage & reference them?

(You may have a lot of references and research material to keep track of!)

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Keeping track of useful items

• Emailing links to yourself

• Using the e-shelf in LibrarySearch• Log in to LibrarySearch

• Click on the star icon beside useful results

• Go to ‘e-shelf’

• Create baskets, email, export results

• NB - most other eresources provide these functions (you can do the same in JSTOR / ProjectMuse / MLA Bibliography / L’Annee Philologique )

• OR you can keep all of your references in ONE PLACE and organised them by topic, essay title or course etc. by exporting references to RefWorks – this is really easy to do!20

Library Services

RefWorks

Bibliographic reference management software

Capture, save and organise references

Create a bibliography for your essay from containing 1 to 1000 items in your Departments Referencing Style in seconds!

Access it via the Library Subject Guides (Citation & Referencing)

Contains online self-help tutorials

Sign up to a free Library RefWorks training session:

Check the Library Information Skills Training Session on the Subject guide: http://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/

Step four: save the results that you need (references, abstracts, URL links, full text) and organise these so that you can find them when you need them & reference them in your assignments

Library Services

Access online resources off-campus

Royal Holloway ‘Campus Anywhere’ (VPN)

The only way to access all of our electronic resources off campus is to install the Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, known as 'CampusAnywhere'. 

This is quick and easy to set up and works on PCs, laptops & Macs

Go to the IT Services website to find out more:

http://www.rhul.ac.uk/it/home.aspx

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Using other libraries

Royal Holloway students all get free access to Senate House Library (SHL):

take along your RHUL Id card if you want to borrow books or use the study space there.

Online registration for SHL’s eresources:see the ‘Beyond RHUL’ section on the Library

Subject Guides for more information

Access to other Libraries using SCONUL Access:

see the ‘Beyond RHUL’ section on the Library Subject Guides for more information

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Questions?

Russell Burke

Information Consultant

2-07 Bedford LibraryRoyal Holloway University of London

Russell.Burke@rhul.ac.uk

01784 414065

Please remember to always check:

• LIBRARY SUBJECT GUIDES

• @RHUL_Library on TWITTER

• the Library’s FACEBOOK PAGE

for the latest information and updates!

Leo Reynolds. Flickr. CC-BY-NA