Literature reviews

Finding your sources

Library Search

The more you read around your subject, the more familiar you will become with the current literature, and you will start to build a map of the sources you already have, and the information you are missing. A clear search strategy can help fill these gaps in your knowledge, and your themes or topics of interest can be used as key search terms when looking for further resources.
 

Top tips for using Library Search

• Use Boolean terms to help the search engine recognise which words should be treated as a phrase. For example, if you search “costume design”, the search engine will know to treat “costume design” as a phrase, not two separate words.
   
• You can then add AND and OR to add in additional terms and synonyms. For example, “costume design” AND “film” will only find articles or sources that include both of these terms together, helping you to narrow your search. To go wider, think about adding in synonyms using the OR function: “costume design” AND “film” or “cinema” or “movies”.
   
• You can also use an asterisk (*) to search for a word stem to help widen your search. For example, if you search teach*, this will find articles that include the word teach, teacher, teachers, teaching and so on.
   
• Decide at the start on what your inclusion and exclusion criteria will be. These might include limits on:
  - Date of publication
  - Language
  - Type/group of participants
  - Peer-reviewed journals
  - Keywords and synonyms
  - Type of study, ie. systematic review, case study etc.
   

Search strategies

Explore the following resources for more information on search strategy models:

• PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) - Used primarily in Health Sciences but offers a clear step-by-step approach to literature searching that could be adapted for use in other subjects.
• SPIDER - Developed from the PICK method, SPIDER searching is used mainly in qualitative research to identify a phenomenon or behaviour, rather than a specific intervention (more quantitative).