1. BA (Hons) Communications Library & information skills to help you with your dissertation Emily Shields & Padma Inala [email_address] [email_address]

2. Consider this....

3. Making your research work for you Step 5 Review the process Step 2 get hold of information Step 3 evaluate information Step 1 define topic & plan search Step 4 organise & use information

4. Keywords : It’s vital to pick out the keywords in your dissertation topic and make sure you address each of these in your work. The keywords are the words that you will use to search on the Library Catalogue, databases and search engines with. A study of the way the media in Britain is prejudiced against asylum seekers

7. Keywords : For each of the keywords in your dissertation topic think of alternative terms that could be used by an author to express the same concept or a similar idea. For example: Prejudice Media News Tabloid Broadsheet Immigrants Racism Asylum seekers Refugees Migrants bias discrimination Press stereotype TV

8. Refine your search strategy Search strategy Library Catalogue Books & e-books Journal articles ASSIA Expanded Academic Custom newspapers dissertations People tutor experts Internet Search Engines Gateways Google Scholar

9. Think about different word endings: Truncation communication ▪ communicated ▪ communicating ▪ communicate If you were searching for a journal article for information on ‘communication’ all of these word endings would be acceptable as they are all related to the key term ‘communication’. However, a computer will only look for the exact word that you put in, so would not find any of the other terms.

10. Think about different word endings: Truncation communication communicat* To search for all of the word endings associated with ‘communication’ use an asterisk * at the end of the stem of the word. This tells the database that you are only interested in words starting with ‘communicat’ but you do not mind how the word ends. Get into the habit of truncating as many of your search terms as possible as this will enhance your search. = communicat ed = communicat ing = communicat e

13. Making your research work for you Step 5 Review the process Step 2 get hold of information Step 3 evaluate information Step 1 define topic & plan search Step 4 organise & use information