Literature searching - a strategy

When you are looking for books or articles or other material on a subject for an assignment or a dissertation, it helps to be systematic about how you go about it. It may help to keep the following in mind while searching:

Scope

• Determine precisely the scope of your topic. Check in specialised dictionaries or encyclopaedias if you are uncertain about the meaning of specialist terms or for a basic overview of the subject.
• Decide on the scope of your search: how much and the nature of the information you are going to need. How far back in time do you want to go? Is your approach international or concentrated on this country? Are you prepared to visit other libraries and organisations to do further research?

Analysis

• Analyse your chosen topic carefully. Ensure that you have covered all the aspects of it that you intend to include in your final work. Don't discount the fact that you may need to adjust your sights depending or how much - or how little - information you discover.

Keywords

• Get an idea of the way your chosen topic is described in the literature or on the Internet. It's important to be aware of variant spellings or terms so that you can quickly home in on relevant material in books, databases, journals and other electronic sources including the Internet.

Evaluation

• Always critically evaluate the material that you find whether it is a book, an article or a website. Make sure it really is relevant and appropriate to your needs. The Internet Detective is a good guide to evaluating the quality of websites.

Record

• Always, always keep track of the books, articles, websites, etc. that you find as you use them by recording the references at the time since it can be very difficult to retrace your steps at a later stage. This also applies to anything you request on interlibrary loan. Check with your tutor which method of citing references they want you to use: there is also guidance on this on the Library web pages.