The process of searching for academic resources involves identifying your search terms, deciding which information sources you are going to search, using relevant search techniques and evaluating your search results. This section will introduce you to different techniques that you can use to help you find relevant information and increase the accuracy of your search. You may also be interested in the Evaluating Information Resources page.
Before you start to search for information it is important to identify the search terms or keywords that you are going to use.
In this example we are looking for information on the impact that the use of electric cars has on the environment
Highlight the keywords in your assignment title:
The Impact that the use of Electric Cars has on the Environment
Then you need to consider the alternative words and spellings that you could use such as American spellings and synonyms. Some students find that drawing a mind map helps them to identify their search terms.
| Impact | Electric Cars | Environment |
| Effect | Electric Motor Vehicles | Pollution |
| Influence | Electric Automobiles | Climate Change |
The information that you are searching for will help you to decide which print and online resources you are going to use. Books will provide you with an introduction to a new subject and journal articles will provide you with access to the latest research.
LinkedIn Learning provides BPP students with access to free online courses which includes Identifying Your Information Needs and How to Conduct Advanced Searches
The library recommends that you use the different search facilities that are available from the Online Library website which provides access to different search facilities that you can use to find academic resources. They are listed below:
Find a Book-search for both print books and e-books
Find a Journal-discover which resource a specific journal title is available from and if it is available in full text
Search Everything-searches across most of the library’s collections providing access to books, e-books and journal articles
Online Resources-access to an alphabetical list of the resources that the library subscribes to.
Search engines like Google are not usually recommended for finding academic information as anyone can publish information on the internet. However if you are searching for a government report or an organisation’s website using Google will be the quickest way to find this information.
It is important that you carefully evaluate the information that you find to ensure that you are using accurate and reliable information. The web address can provide you with useful information about the author of the site, for example, ac.uk means that the author of the site is a UK university.
Google Scholar is a search engine that searches for academic information such as journal articles, books and theses from academic publishers and open access resources across a range of subject areas.
The Google Scholar Search Help page explains how you can use different search techniques.
However you need to be aware that Google Scholar may retrieve a large number of results and the research may not have been reviewed by experts.
The following online videos will provide you with information regarding using Generative AI tools in your assignments:
Different search techniques can be used to combine your keywords which will help you to find relevant information and reduce the number of search results.
The online resources that the library subscribes use these techniques in different ways. Click on the help function of the resource that you are using to discover the search techniques that are available.
Most online resources include an advanced search facility which enables you to increase the accuracy of your search. There are usually different search boxes which enable you to search specific fields such as author or title and combine search terms as demonstrated in the screenshot below.
A phrase search is used when you want to search for two or more keywords adjacent to each other in a specific order. Quotation marks are used at the start and end of the phrase.
Combining your keywords using the following words enables you to include or exclude specific keywords
AND
OR
NOT
| AND | Electric Car AND Environment | This will return search results that include both electric cars and environment |
| OR | Electric Car OR Electric Motor Vehicle | This will return search results that mention either electric cars or electric motor vehicles |
| NOT | Electric Car NOT Hybrid Car | This will return search results that only include the words electric car |
Some of the library resources use a truncation symbol which is used to search for different word endings and spellings.
For example, searching for comput* will retrieve results that include both computer and computing.
A wildcard is a symbol that is used to represent a letter in a word and is used to find different spellings of the same word.
For example, searching for organi?ation will retrieve results that include both organisation and organization.
The search results page on most online resources provides you with filters that you can use to help you to find the information that you need.
The filters that are available may include the following:
| Full Text | Filter your results so that only items that are available in full text are displayed. |
| Publication Date | Filter your results so that the items are published within a specific date range |
| Source Type | Filter your results, for example, to only display academic journals |
| Subject | Filter your results by associated subject headings |
If you have retrieved a large number of search results you could consider the following:
If you have retrieved a small number of search results you could consider the following questions:
