Take time to think about what types of information resources you will need for your assignment.
For some assignments you will need your notes from lectures, plus key text books from your reading lists and journal articles you have found on the topic.
For others you will need more detailed information such as statistics or standards or even primary data such as survey data or results of experiments. Let's consider how you can select keywords for your search. There are three main steps:
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Step one: Divide your search up into key concepts |
Step two: Search for keyword variations
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Step three: Put it all together |
Think of a topic in your subject area - perhaps an essay title from later on in the term. Now fill in the boxes below to formulate your keyword search:
Step 1 1. 2. 3. 4. |
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Step 2
1
2
3
4 |
For each of the key concepts above think of possible keyword variations: |
Step 3
Concept 1
Concept 2
Concept 3
Concept 4
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Step 3 - Now put it all together: |
Once you have formulated your key words or key concepts search you can enter them into databases, search engines and the library catalogue to retrieve relevant information for your topic.
We have a guide to using the catalogue to find relevant books, or you can watch our vidcast on finding ebooks:
Remember, if you need a reminder of how to locate resources in the library, the librarian is probably your most useful resource!
The next pages will help you find the journal articles you need.
A database is a searchable collection of records pointing to published information. Databases can store, index and retrieve information. For the purposes of your assignments, your tutors use the term databases to refer to database products from external suppliers. One example would be CINAHL. Some databases are free but the library subscribes to many others.
Some other information providers can be on the dividing line between a database or a host service. A host service makes available many individual databases under one search system. If you refer to one of these when writing up your search strategy, you should name the individual database you have used, or name the subject search, an example of this would be the Proquest Central service which covers individual databases such as PsycInfo, but if you did a more general search, you could refer to the Proquest Social Science Search. If in doubt, check with your lecturer or Academic Development Tutor.
Some services are hosts, so don't refer to them as databases when writing up - an example would be EBSCO.
The library catalogue is best described in exactly these words.
Internet search engines (like Google Scholar) also can be used to find useful information, but in academia they are known as search engines.
What information do they contain?
Some databases are general and cover all subject areas (like the Discover search on the main library web page), while others focus on a particular discipline. Some contain specialist subject information such as market research reports or industry standards. The key function of most of them however, is to act as an index to journal articles (or maybe individual chapters within a particular book). However, some may also find books and reports.
Time:
There could be many journals which contain articles relevant to your assignment. However, the library catalogue does not index individual articles. Looking through individual journals would take a very long time. Using databases is a much quicker and more effective way of finding this information. You will be able to search across hundreds of journal titles simultaneously.
Reliabilty and quality:
'Bibliographic' databases usually contain references, abstracts and sometimes full text articles which have been carefully selected by subject specialists. They can therefore be used with more confidence than items found by internet search engines like Google.
Convenience:
In some cases you will be able to read a full text electronic version of the article online. You won't even have to come to the library if you use a computer elsewhere, either on or off campus.
Probably the most popular way of finding information is searching the internet. More and more information is being published this way, including web pages, blogs and wikis.
To find information on the Internet you can use a search engine such as Google or better still Google Scholar. This guide will show you how to search Google effectively.
The web is most people's favourite information tool. It is very easy to search, it can be used anywhere and there are no passwords to remember. It will take you anywhere you want to go - or will it?
No one search engine searches the entire web. Even Nikesh Arora, then the chief of Google Europe admitted in 2005 that " less than 10% of the world's information is online today. The remaining 90% is still out there on television programmes, on radio stations and in books in libraries" (Burrell 2005)
Users of search engines need to spend a lot of time thinking critically about the results presented. Anyone can publish anything.
Don't be caught out by hoax sites or by misleading scholarship.
Other sections will explain what databases are available at GCU and give some top tips for their use.
Google is the best known and most popular internet search engine, probably because it is so easy to use. However, the quality and usefulness of the results depends on what you type in the search box! Knowing how to enter your search in order to get the most relevant results is quite a skill. We have already talked about keywords and understanding the question now let's look at Google.
Beginners tips for improving your search results
Unless you specify otherwise, Google automatically searches for all the words you type in to appear anywhere in the webpage or document, not necessarily next to each other.
Advanced Google searching and internet search strings
If you are confident with the basics of Google searching, the next level of search skills is using ‘search strings’. These are what advanced Internet searchers use to find exactly what they are looking for. A search string is comprised of a number of search commands which are typed in together.
Google have a full list of search commands. As an introduction, here are some of the main search commands you can use:
Example Search String
For example, here is a search string you might use to find PowerPoint presentations about Martin Luther King’s speeches given between 1963 and 1967: “Luther King” ~speech 1963..1967 filetype:ppt.
This example consists of four components:
1) The phrase “Luther King”.
2) The thesaurus word ‘speech’.
3) The date range 1963 to 1967.
4) The file type ‘ppt’.