1. Topic 8 Skills in Information Retrieval

2. 8. Skills in Information Retrieval Learning Objectives: At the end of the Chapter, you should be able to: • identify the various information sources i.e. OPAC, electronic databases and Internet • apply the author, title, author-title, subject and keyword search strategies systematically • apply search strategies to the following databases: OPAC, e-book and, e-journal

3. OPAC Search Strategies

4. Searching Electronic Databases • Searching E-Books (Electronic book) • To conduct a search for a full-text online book, we can use “Ebrary”. • The easiest search - use keywords search. • Reading an e-book is different from reading a printed book. • One way to read the e-book would be to view the “Table of contents” and simply select the topics

5. Searching for Information on the Internet • The information on the Internet is not like in a library where all items are identified and can be traced by the catalogues and indexes. • There are millions of files on the web & anyone can publish on the Internet. • There is no control or filtering of the information published. • Searching the web therefore is a challenge and you need to develop a search strategy.

6. Search Strategies • In searching for information on the web you do not try to retrieve all the relevant documents on a topic of interest. • Just select a few key and relevant documents.

7. Internet Search Tools • Address - type the URL • Surf or browse • Search Engines (single search engines) • Meta Search Engines - submit a search across to many search engines at the same time.e.g. Mamma or Dogpile • Subject Directories/Subject Gateways - websites are organised into a hierarchy of categories • Libraries on the net • Databases - Other than the subscribed ones there are free databases of reference material on specialised topics • Usenet Newsgroup - join an email discussion group or a usergroup

8. Question? Question? Question? End of Topic 8