Information essentials

With so much information available, how do you know where to start?

Search strategies

One of the most important things to do when looking for information for your assignment is to plan your search. There are often alternative words and phrases that you can use to find further sources about the same topic. Planning your search terms and phrases will retrieve more relevant results.

If you use the SKILL technique to plan your search, you will end up with better results.

• Summarise your topic
• Select your keywords
• Identify synonyms and alternative keywords
• Link your keywords and phrases (e.g. with AND, OR and NOT)
• Locate and evaluate your results

To help you plan your searches, we provide a search strategy planner document that you can use to follow the steps.

Searching the Library

The Library gives you access to over 2 million book titles and over 100,000 journal titles, in print and electronically. This amount of information would be a bit overwhelming to search through by hand, so Library Search is here to help you find what you need. Library Search is also available on the Library homepage.

You will be presented with a log in option when you run a search in Library Search. We recommend you log in to get more results and quickly access the full text of any online resources.

For a physical item, Library Search will show the location, call number, and availability. It is important to know this information before coming to the Library and trying to find the item on a shelf.

Databases

You might not find everything that you need in Library Search. You may want to use multidisciplinary and subject-specific databases when you need to search precisely or comprehensively.

Databases are high quality and subject specific online information-retrieval systems. You can use them to find journal articles and other publication types, such as books, theses, newspapers, videos and images. Although accessed over the internet, databases are not traditional websites and many require logins to use.

Searching databases

Before you start, it's always a good idea to plan your search strategy. At this stage, ensure that you choose the right database, and carefully select your keywords. Limiting your search to the article title or abstract fields will help retrieve a smaller number of relevant articles.

Searching in databases has tips and tricks for conducting advanced searches.

Searching by subject

Many of UQ’s databases also have their own subject-specific thesaurus which can help you find information within that database using subject concepts rather than keywords. Examples of databases that contain a thesaurus:

• The medical database PubMed uses MeSH.
• The education database ERIC uses a thesaurus.
• The business journal database Business Source.

Check the Help feature within the database for further information or contact AskUs.