Literature search: How to find journal articles

Handy hints before you begin

If you have read the hints on a previous occasion and want to skip this page, click the arrow button:

What is a database?

In the following pages I'll show you how to use a database (often called a bibliographic database) to find journal articles on a topic. A database is a computerised index to journal articles, chapters in books and other sources of information such as conference papers. The Library Catalogue will only tell you the titles of journals held by, or that we can access from, the University of Adelaide Library. A database will index each individual article from an extensive range of journals.
Databases cover journals world wide. No library will contain or have access to all the articles indexed. That means that you will need to check the results of your search to see if the articles you have identified as relevant are available in the University of Adelaide Library.

I'll use the MLA database as an example. This is the most useful database you can use for literary research. The techniques I'll describe may be applied pretty easily to other bibliographic databases.

How the literature search techniques pages work

I've put together a series of linked images of web pages showing the whole process step by step. Simply click anywhere on an image, or on a green arrow button, to go to the next step in the search sequence.

Bear in mind that the results of looking up a topic in a database won't be the same every time: the indexing process is continuous and new articles are constantly being added. The screens that you see in my demonstration won't necessarily be what you'll get if you repeat my search example in the actual MLA database.

Defining your topic

One of the traps of database searching is that you can be easily seduced by the apparent ease with which you get results; my primary concern in these literature search techniques pages is to make sure you get the best possible results. This will involve you in a little preliminary effort: I'll show you how to accurately define your topic and then construct a search strategy that will find all relevant journal articles.

Keywords

The first thing to do to define your topic is to write it out exactly, in simple English. It might pay you to look at a dictionary to clarify in your own mind the precise meaning of the topic and/or individual words.
The next step is to underline the significant words in the sentence that defines your topic.
Here's an example:

The underlined words are known as keywords and are the ones you will enter into the database search boxes. Please note that the word study is NOT a significant word - it won't in any way improve your search results.

Thesaurus

For each underlined keyword, think of other words that mean the same thing (called 'synonyms'), or that are similar in meaning. We can use these words to widen our search.
The best way to do find words that mean the same thing is to use a reference work called a thesaurus. I like to use The new Oxford thesaurus of English and there are other useful thesauri.
If I look up the first keyword, parody, in a thesaurus I'll find an entry that lists the related word satire. We'll see later how to incorporate this vital information into our search.
Similarly, if I look up novel in the thesaurus I'll find fiction listed as a synonym; the word fiction will also be added to widen our search.

Some databases have an inbuilt thesaurus; MLA has one - look under the tab Search Tools - but it's not very good. You'll be far better off using a published thesaurus such as The new Oxford thesaurus of English.

You also need to bear in mind terminology and spelling differences. For example, if you are researching a film you will need to use the word movie as well as film in your search statement. Likewise, you'll need to include alternative spellings such as humour as well as humor in your search.

Here is how a search using thesaurus terms might be constructed:

You can take this process further if you want to make your search even wider. For example, you might think of also adding the broader terms comedy or writing.

But wait! there are other ways you can refine your search strategy to make it more effective; let's look at truncation.

Truncation and wild card searching

Keywords may have variant endings - singular, plural and adjectival forms. Truncating a word can widen your search by looking for the root of the word plus its suffixes. If, for example, we replace the word parody with the truncated form parod*, the database will find not only parody but also words such as parodic, parodical, parodies, parodize, and so on.

You can also use what is known as a wild card to replace letters inside a word. For example, wom*n will find both woman and women.
Be careful not to go too far with truncation: think of the logical root of the word. If you search for cat* the database will find records containing the words cat, cats, catalogue, cataclysm, catamaran, catastrophe, catch, cataract, and so on.

MLA uses an asterisk * for truncation and wild card searching; different databases might use other symbols such as a question mark ?, the hash # or even a dollar sign $. Make sure you know what the truncation symbol is for the database you are using.

Here is how a search might look using thesaurus terms and truncation:

A bit about Boole

The search we have constructed above is using Boolean operators to find articles on your topic. There is no need to be afraid of this idea: simply put, Boolean operators link your concepts and keywords together so that the database understands exactly what you are asking it to retrieve.

Let's look at the two main operators:
OR. If I ask for parody or satire the database will find all records that contain the word parody and all records that contain the word satire, as well as all records that contain both the words. Using the Boolean operator OR widens your search.

AND. Narrows your search by combining words. The results found must contain all the words which you have joined by using AND.

There are other operators; one of them is NOT that you can use to exclude a term. My advice is don't use it unless you know exactly what you are doing: it's very easy to throw out the babies with the bathwater by an injudicious use of Boolean NOT.

In our example:

we have constructed a typical Boolean search. We are asking the database to do several things:
[1] Using the Boolean OR operator, find all records that contain either of the words parody or satire, or both words.
[2] Using the Boolean OR operator, find all records that contain either of the words novel or fiction, or both words.
[3] Using the Boolean OR operator, find all records that are about James Joyce or that are about Samuel Beckett, or that are about both those authors.

Next we apply the Boolean AND operator to narrow our results:

The final step is to ask the database to combine search results [3] and [4], again using Boolean operator AND. This will produce a results list of articles on your exact topic.

You might be able to follow this better if I draw you some diagrams:

Marking records

When you are going through the records that the database has found as a result of your search, you can mark the ones that you think might be relevant to your topic by clicking in the box next to the record.

When you have finished going through your search results you can call up your marked records list. This will provide you with a handy list of journal articles to follow up. You can save your marked records list, email it, or print it out.

Let's get started !

Now it's time to start learning how to do a literature search for journal articles. The structure is a series of linked images of web pages showing the whole process step by step. Simply click anywhere on an image, or on a green arrow button, to go to the next step in the search sequence.

Click the arrow to begin