5 Finding information

Light person people  by Tima Miroshnichenko is licensed under a Pexels license

For most of your assignments, you will need to find scholarly or peer reviewed information related to your topic in order to find out what researchers have said about it and develop your own ideas or perspectives.

Types of information

Different topic areas will require different types of information, such as scholarly and non scholarly sources. Each information source will serve a purpose for the assessment and topic area you are studying and needs to be assessed for quality and relevance.


Searching

  1. Before you begin, you need to identify or decide on the focus of your information search. What have you been asked to do?
  2. Next identify words and phrases which best describe the information you want to find then create a search strategy.
  3. Look at the help section of the database or search engine you are using for tips on how to get the most out the results.
  4. You may need to adjust your strategy a few times (e.g. adding or changing search terms).

Tips for effective searching. Combine keywords using AND OR NOT adaptive AND leading results contain both words sustainable OR renewable results contain either words program NOT software results won't contain 'software' Search using quotation marks "project based learning" Search all possible endings using an asterisk recycl* will return recycled, recyclable, and recycling. Account for variations using a wildcard. behavio?r will return behavior and behaviour
Tips for effective searching, Western Sydney University by Ashleigh Watson is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See Appendix D for a full sized version.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Reference management

In your searching, you will come across many sources you want to use or keep and refer to later. Collecting and storing the references of your sources in a central location is good practice and can help you to be more efficient and avoid stressful situations (such as misplacing where a quote has come from).

Reference management tools such as EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley allow you to:

  • organise your research and save time
  • create a database of references
  • automatically generate your in-text citations and references for assignments in a variety of styles.

Note: websites, search engines and databases that automatically generate citations and references are not always accurate. Always check and edit your references against the required referencing style guide available through the Library before submitting your assignment.


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Academic Skills Pocketbook Copyright © 2023 by Richard Scharges; Ashleigh Watson; Linda Thornely; and Susan McGlynn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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