It's possible to find a large amount of information, but seldom "everything". To cover your subject of interest best, it is therefore important that you reflect and plan your information searching to gain as much relevant information as possible.
The information search process
Before you start searching, take the time to reflect about the following:
It´s easy and logic to combine search terms using the words AND, OR and NOT, also called boolean logic or boolean operators.
In databases and search engines you can often combine these by choice, in drop-down menues, but sometimes they can be pre-defined.
Boolean logic works like this:
Truncation
Truncation means that you replace the end of a word with a sign, usually the * sign, alllowing you to search everything starting with a certain stemming.
Example:
If you write socio* you get sociology, sociological, sociopath etc.
Phrase search
You use phrase search when you want specific words to appear in a specific order. Most databases mark phrases with quotation marks "" before and after the phrase.
Examples:
"climate change" gives hits for this phrase, but not for the words in other contexts like changes in the climate generally.
"Karl Marx" gives hits for this specific name in this specific order, but not for the Marx brothers or other persons named Karl.
Field search
Databases are constructed by entering data in different fields. There are author, title, year and abstract fields (and many more). You can use these fields for limiting your search.
Example:
When searching for Michel Foucault you can choose the author field for finding articles by Foucault himself, the abstract field for finding articles mentioning him or the title field for finding articles where he is a prominent figure.
How to make the nagivation of the information landscape easier
No matter where you may have retrieved information, it is important to have a critical approach to your sources.
To evaluate the reliability, your own experience and knowledge as well as the source's reputation plays an important role. Does the source have fact checkers or editors?
By whom?
Author: Is the author well known in their field of research? Does the author have academic legitimacy? Have they been published before? Is there any way to contact the author?
Publisher: Who is responsible for the information - a company, an agency, an organization or an individual? Is there any contact information? Serious publishers often clearly express who they are and what they do. How reputable is the publisher?
For whom?
Target audience: Who is the intended audience (scholars, school children, general public, etc.)?
Relevance: How relevant and/or useful is the material for your needs? Which topics are covered, and to what depth?
Why?
Purpose: What is the purpose of the material – to inform, present research, disseminate views, entertain, to sway the opinion of the audience? Is the information presented with a minimum of bias?
When?
Up-to-date: When was the text written? Is the material enough for you topically? Is the publication or web page dated? Updated? If the date is included it may have various meanings: date first created, date placed on the web or date last revised.
How?
Scholarly: Is it a scholarly text or popular science? Does it include an abstract, theory, method and analysis sections?
References: Which other sources has been cited in the work/material?
To know how owns a web domain might be of great use when you evaluate it's reliability. Below you will find a few different pages where you can find out just that.
This tutorial was created by Western Libraries