Consult the Search guide, librarians, your tutor, your teachers and handbooks in essay writing to solve these issues.
- Do you have a clearly defined seach topic? When you have a clearly defined search topic and you know what you want to address in e.g. a paper, it is easier to start searching for information. Discuss the topic with your teacher/tutor if you need help. You can also read about the formulation of essay topics in handbooks about essay writing.
- Do you know approximately how much and what kind of information you need? What level - a doctoral thesis or an entry from an encyclopaedia? Which are the best places to search? A search engine on the Internet, a reference database or some other source? Have you chosen the information sources that are best suited for your information need? Read more about choosing information sources in the part about Search strategy.
- Find out how the search technique works in the information sources you are using. Many databases have roughly the same functions which facilitate searching and enable very precise searches, but you search in different ways. How does the database you are searching work? Can you use truncation? How can you combine search terms? You can read more about this in the part about Search technique.
- Set aside time for choosing good search terms based on your search topic. Finding the right search terms can be crucial for finding the information you need. Have you found synonyms and alternative terms? Checked index and thesaurus in the database you are using? Read more about this in the part about Search terms.
- Documenting your search makes searching much easier because then you know what search term combinations you have already tried and what databases you have used. E.g. “teacher role” and “distance education” in ERIC gave the following results… If you need to return to a search you can easily check how and where you were searching.
- Make a careful selection of information and evaluate the information you find critically. Does it answer your questions? Is it credible? Up-to-date? Read more about this in the part about criticism of the sources or in the part about evaluating information sources from the Internet. What criteria do you use when you evaluate information?
- Remember to make notes about where you have found the information you are using so that you can refer to those sources correctly. It should be easy for the reader to see what are your own thoughts and conclusions and what you have found in other sources. It should also be easy for the reader to find the sources if they want to use them for further reading or check the information you have used. Read more about citing sources in the part about References. What style of references do you use?
Below you find a checklist, useful for information seeking (both as pdf and word document:
Jenny Löfkvist
2005-06-27
