Literature search techniques: How to find journal articles

Handy hints before you begin

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What is a database?

In the following pages I'll show you how to use an electronic 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 MLA - the most useful database you can use for French literature research - to show you how to search effectively. The techniques I'll describe can 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 screen images that I have used to demonstrate search techniques won't necessarily be what you'll see if you repeat my search examples 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 demonstrate how to construct a search strategy that will find all relevant journal articles in a database.

Keywords

The first thing to do to define your topic is to write it out exactly, in simple language. 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 words study and theme are NOT significant words - they won't in any way improve your search results, but may actually severely restrict them. If an otherwise excellent and relevant paper doesn't include the word 'study', for example, it won't be retrieved in your search results if you include 'study' in your search strategy.

Simplistic search

If you simply take the keywords you have identified, and enter them into a database, you will probably get some results. But this simplistic search certainly won't give you all the relevant articles on your topic that are available in the database.
A simplistic search on the keywords from your topic would look like this:

and would produce some results:

But you are not doing yourself (or the database) justice! Let's see how we can improve our search strategy to get much better results.

Refine and broaden your search

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; the The Macquarie thesaurus is also quite good.

If you look up the first keyword - history - of our search:

in a thesaurus you'll find an entry that lists some other similar words such as: past. If you add extra words to your search strategy you will broaden your search and you will retrieve more results.

Next, look up the word novels in the thesaurus where you'll find an entry that lists similar or related words such as fiction. Again, any related words should be added to our search to broaden it, so that we retrieve more results.

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

This expanded search will find more articles on your topic in the database:

If you are searching for journal articles on a particular topic in French literature you should be looking for articles in French as well as articles in English. To do this you need to add the French language equivalents of your keywords to your search statement. Use your standard French dictionary such as the excellent Collins Robert French dictionary = Le Robert & Collins dictionnaire français-anglais, anglais-français.
If you prefer to use an online dictionary you'll find a good selection on the French online dictionaries page of my French resources website.

A French dictionary will give you the translation histoire for history and roman for the word novel. We can further broaden our search by adding these equivalent French words:

Of course, you can now broaden your search even further by using a French language thesaurus to find synonyms for histoire and roman. There's a link on my French online dictionaries page to two excellent dictionaries of synonyms.

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 history with the truncated form hist*, the database will find not only records containing the word history, but will also search for words such as historic, historical, and so on. By the way, the truncated form hist* will also find the French language equivalent histoire.
You should apply a similar technique to the search word novels. If we use the truncated form novel* as a search word we'll be searching for the word novel as well as the plural, novels. The truncated form roman* will find roman as well as romans.
Similarly, fiction* will find records containing the word fiction as well as fictional and fictionary.

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.

You'll find that by truncating your keywords you will expand your search, so you'll retrieve articles from the database that you would otherwise have missed.

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!

The MLA database 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 applying truncation where appropriate:

This further expanded search will find even more articles on your topic in the database:

A bit about Boole

The search we have constructed is using what are known as 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 in a precise way, so that the database understands exactly what you are asking it to retrieve.

Let's look at the two main operators, OR and AND:

OR

If I ask for history OR past the database will find all records that contain the word history and all records that contain the word past, as well as all records that contain both the words. Using the Boolean operator OR widens your search.

AND

Narrows your search to focus on your topic. The database will find only documents that contain all the words which you have joined with the AND operator.

There are other Boolean 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 search:

we have constructed a typical Boolean search. [Note: to keep things simple I have not used the truncated forms (hist*, novel*, and so on) of the search terms, and I haven't used the French equivalents such as histoire].

Looking carefully at this 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 history or past, or that contain both words



2. Using the Boolean OR operator, find all records that contain either of the words novels or fiction, or that contain both words




Next we apply the Boolean AND operator to narrow (focus) our search results:



3. Using the Boolean AND operator, find all records that contain either of the words history or past, or both words, and that also contain either of the words novels or fiction, or both words



4. The final step is to ask the database to combine search results of [3] with the keyword modiano, 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:

Multiple searches

You'll soon get yourself tied into knots if you try to apply all the above techniques at once. Take it one step at a time and do separate searches rather than constructing one big, complicated search.

For example, you might choose to run one search using English language terminology...

...and then repeat your search using French language equivalents:

If you are not finding enough results with the specific terms you have chosen to describe your topic, think laterally and perhaps in broader terms, so as to cast your research nets as widely as possible. Then repeat your initial searches using the broader terms.

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 save your marked records list, print it out, or email it. This will provide you with a handy list of journal articles to follow up:

Applying limits

If you wish, you can apply limits to the database before you start searching; for example, you can specify that you want to find only journal articles, or limit the results to those written in the English language:

My advice is not to impose limits unless you are certain that you want to exclude some material. After all, it would be a great pity to miss seeing a reference to an excellent book on your topic because you limited your search to journal articles. And it shouldn't be necessary for me to remind you that as a French student you will be interested in critical works on your topic in both English and French!

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