This is a presentation delivered to Year Three students on the BSc(Hons) Health and Community Studies course at University Campus Oldham (www.uco.oldham.ac.uk) in October 2013. It covers a range of information sources of interest to students starting their final year Literature Study including Summon and other University of Huddersfield databases (www.library.hud.ac.uk) and provides tips and information on effective and informed searching.
Further information on UCO Library can be found at www.uco.oldham.ac.uk/library
2. Work to do before you search
Refresher on Summon and new
features of Summon 2.0
Search for relevant journals
Other health &community resources
Practice (I’m here to help!)
3. “A good literature review is an
organised, balanced and critical
overview of published work
relevant to the topic. “
4. “It should summarise the literature
studied, critically comment on at
least some of the sources used, and
outline the current level of
understanding in terms of published
theory and research.”
5. “All the references cited should be relevant and
current. A general guide is to only include
references from the last 5 years, unless the
work referred to is seminal, used as a historical
source, or selected for any other specific
reason which should be stated. You may wish
to explore the currency of your sources with
your supervisor.”
6. Dates you searched
Name of search engine or system
Names of the sources (database or
website)
Categories, key words, limitations, etc
Ways in which you broadened or
narrowed the search
A comment on how many "hits" you
found
11. Limit by date range
Sort by date order
Limit by item type (ebooks, journal
articles, etc)
Use Advanced Search to search in
different fields (title, abstract, etc)
12. On the results page, click the Down
arrow next to the Search button
13. Searching inside the title or abstract of
an article helps to narrow your results
14. Use “phrase searching” to be
more specific
Use truncation to broaden
your results
15. Search multiple variations of the
same word, eg.
Communication
Communications
Communicated
Communicates
16. Use the asterisk* to say:
I want anything that starts like this…
For
child, children, chil
dhood, child’s, chil
dcare
25.
Think broadly (what would relevant journals be
called?)
Think laterally (think of all the relevant disciplines)
26.
Social work in health care
Health and social care in the community
Journal of youth and adolescence
Child & youth services
Children and youth services review
Health promotion practice
International journal of health promotion and
education
Choose a journal (or find one yourself) and try searching
inside it for articles
27. The articles that this author has
referenced
*Example from CINAHL
The articles that have referenced this article
29. Think about your subject…
Which is the closest matching
discipline (Nursing? Social Work?
Sociology?)
Choose a discipline to find lots of
useful databases and links to
websites
30. Listed under Nursing:
CINAHL
Medline
Listed under Social Work
Social Care Online
Community Care Inform
31. There’s no easy answer!
Picture courtesy of Hannah K on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/90692443@N05/