Here you can get tips on how to find material in the subjects of e-government and media technology.
E-government
The subject e-government is relatively new, which can mean that the usual information sources do not give as much results as you are used to. Here it is particularly important to collect useful key words that turn up along the way and be aware that the terminology increases all the time.
The English term E-government does not yet have a Swedish corresponding term. The Swedish terms that first come to mind are ‘e-förvaltning’ (e-administration), ‘e-tjänster’ (e-services), ‘e-demokrati’ (e-democracy) and ‘24-timmarsmyndigheter’ (24-hour-authorities). These key words and their English equivalents can be good starting points for further searches.
Dictionaries
In NE, Nationalencyclopedin, the term e-government is not used presently, there you must search for 24-timmarsmyndigheter.
The Internet
Many documents in this subject are free to access on the Internet. But searching for information on authorities’ home pages can sometimes be more difficult than just typing the search terms on Google. If you can not find the information by using a search engine you can go directly to the website and search there.
Useful web sites:
Sverige direkt: sverige.se
Riksdagen: http://www.riksdagen.se/
Government publications (e.g. SOU): http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/574
Statskontoret (Swedish agency for public management) http://www.24-timmarsmyndigheten.se/
Full text databases
In ELIN @Blekinge you can find international articles in English. First you get a list of results for your search terms, and then based on an abstract you can decide whether you want to get the whole article. In case you do – click the full text button.
If for example you search for e-government in ELIN@ you will find such a great amount of articles that it would be too time-consuming to go through them all. In this situation it is good to refine the search by adding a few more words that make your search more nuanced and precise (e.g. democracy). Analyse the list of articles you found (the result list) to see if they meet your expectations, otherwise you can try using other words (electronic government, e-democracy, egov etc.). When you have found a good search string (e.g. “All fields=e-government* and All Fields=democra*”) you can save it. By clicking in ELIN@ your search string is saved, and each time a new article corresponds to your question you will get a message to the e-mail address you stated when you logged in.
The e-book library ebrary
In ebrary, which is a great collection of international e-books (about 20 000 titles), you can read the book directly on the screen, but first you must install a special program (ebrary reader) which enables you to see the text. When you are searching ebrary you can choose to search through all text in the books. This mostly results in a very long list which is difficult to grasp, but limiting the search by adding more terms to the search string pays off.
Reference databases
The point of a reference database is to make documents searchable from a number of angles. What you find in a reference database is not the full text itself, but a reference to where it may be found. For a journal article for example, you get the article’s author and title, the journal name, year, volume, number and page reference.
ArtikelSök
is a very useful reference database when you want articles about Swedish conditions. You will not find scientific articles, but articles from newspapers and popular press. By using ArtikelSök you can for example find articles on how people work with e-government in public administration in different places in Sweden. Plus, it can be a good starting point for further searches. Also note that every article is provided with a couple of subject words, and if you click them you will get new result lists that may contain interesting material. Save words that lead to interesting articles, they may be useful for a later occasion. Searching for e-government in ArtikelSök does not give very many records at the moment. Instead try: 24-timmarsmyndigheten, e-tjänster, förvaltning, informationsteknik, internet, demokrati and/or different combinations of the search terms based on your own question/problem. Other examples of useful words: offentlig service, medborgare, medborgarinflytande, nättjänster, offentlig förvaltning. The idea of listing these words is of course not that they must be used, but rather to show how terms which are very similar and synonyms can give completely different results and that you must be creative and reflect on your search order to get good results.
Media technology
The term ”media technology” is mainly used as a name for educational programmes in those fields that involve publishing of digital information, i.e. web technology, video, sound, programming, design, games, 3D, animation etc. The phrase “media technology” is rarely used in books, articles etc. about these subjects. This is why the specific terms are best used when searching. If you particularly want to search for information which comprises several of these subjects, “multimedia” is probably the best term to use – though the use of this term is decreasing because a great part of what is published digitally is integrated between several of these fields. Regarding the really big software names you must also include the software names in the search, e.g. Maya, Photoshop, Cubase.
The most important sources for searching are available for free from search engines like Google and different kinds of “social software”. In bookmark sites like http://del.icio.us for instance, you can see examples of what bookmarks most users have made in different subjects – tags.
One important source that is reached from the Library web page is ebrary. Ebrary has loads of media technology books and they are always available. The books can also be searches, and you can also write comments and make bookmarks. For example you can easily search for a function or a bit of code and the go directly to the place where it is mentioned in a particular book. It is like searching on the Internet, but with some advantages.
Printed books can be found through the Library’s online catalogue. It does not matter which of our libraries hold the book. If it is held at Infocenter in Ronneby for example, you look up their mail-address on the library web page, send an e-mail where you state your name, library card number, book-title and that you want to collect the book in Karlshamn. When you want to choose books to use it can be good to search for them in a system with social navigation (grades and reviews from readers), like Amazon.com.
Scientific journals are found electronically in full text from ELIN@Blekinge on the Library web page. From the library’s web pages you can also find Mediearkivet and Presstext, if you need to search for newspaper articles. Besides Nationalencyclopedin you will also find a number of dictionaries on the library web page.
If you have questions you are likely to find the answer in the Quick Search Guide or elsewhere on our web pages, otherwise we are always at your service
Peter Giger
2005-12-14
