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Academic Skills: Information Research for Historianslibguides.rhul.ac.uk/

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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

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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My essay question / research topic:

What do I want to find out?

(Describe the next slide: what do you see?

What words would you search for to find information on what is

depicted?)

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Developing your search strategy

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My topic: ‘Emigration during the Great Famine’

Main concepts & keywords

Alternative terms

1. Emigration migration, (Irish) diaspora

2. Great Famine Irish famine, Potato famine, Great Irish famine

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Developing your search strategy

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Think carefully about which keywords you need to search for:

Alternative terms e.g. governance / policy / regulation

Alternative spellings e.g. colour or color; organisation or organization

Changing terminologye.g. consumption / tuberculosis

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:

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/

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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 & their eresources: senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/

Other internet resources… e.g. public & private archives (you may have to

visit these in person to gain access)

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Primary material and reference resources

See the E-resources section of the:

History Subject Guide http://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/History

for lists of online primary material resources, reference resources and much more! (Listed by type in the drop-down menu.)

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Secondary material resources

Full-text databases• JSTOR• Project Muse

Bibliographic databases (no or some full text, can use Find It links to check for full text)• Web of Knowledge• MLA Bibliography

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Why can’t I just use Google?

Evaluating information sources:

http://prezi.com/q5jglgamre6c/evaluating-information/13

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 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 (also useful if you have too many results)e.g. emigration AND Ireland

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Results containing EMIGRATION

Results containing

BOTH TERMS

Results containing

IRELAND

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 (also useful if you have too few results)e.g. role OR function

17ie. brings back results where any the words searched for are included somewhere in the title, summary and/or full-text

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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 histor* - finds history, historical, historiography etc. 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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“Hundred Years War”

“Great Irish Famine”

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 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.

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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• 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!22

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RefWorks

Bibliographic reference management software Capture, save and organise referencesCreate 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 tutorialsSign up to a free Library RefWorks training session:

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

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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 informationAccess 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 BurkeInformation Consultant2-07 Bedford LibraryRoyal Holloway University of LondonRussell.Burke@rhul.ac.uk01784 414065Please 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