Exploiting information: getting the most from the OU Library

Again need the slides here.. it would be useful to annotate the slide pack actually...not sure if that technology exists yet...

Steven Harris
11:10 on 23 March 2011

Library Home > Your subject > [Engineering]

This shows all the databases related to your subject e.g. [Engineering]

Steven Harris
11:13 on 23 March 2011

Beware that database names change with alarming frequency!

Steven Harris
11:13 on 23 March 2011

Citation searching!

Moving forward in time - i.e. searching through the literature for authors  whom have also cited this paper!

i.e. no longer stuck going backwards in time

Check out the demonstration search on the Library website...

e.g. ISI Web of Knowledge > Cited Reference Search 

This is realy useful for following conversations/arguments within a domain...

Steven Harris
11:23 on 23 March 2011

Arts and Humanities Citation Index is a similar database for humanities...

Steven Harris
11:24 on 23 March 2011

How to keep up to date:

• Alerts - via email e.g. zetoc or TicTOC / IEEE Explore
• RSS Feeds
• Tracking engines

Steven Harris
11:30 on 23 March 2011

researchgate.net

friendfeed.com

these are both soc.net. updating tools

Steven Harris
11:31 on 23 March 2011

Yep, the slides would be great , but I assume that they'll be here eventually.

And using the new OU suoer-program 

Http\\:Compendium.open.ac.uk

you probably can annotate the raw slides. Inter-lecture real time referencing, go cloudscape! 

Basically the Librarians say your Lit review needs you to come up with a search strategy, repeat it  periodically, use social networking to ensure that you're not missing anything by not knowing the keywords.

The Library website offers tutorials if you need them.

There is another huge proliferation of searching, bibliography and citation managing and manipulating tools, and they're expanding all the time. If you've got time, experiment.

If you take one thing from this presentation, it's that reference management is essential, easy and that if you don't have time to explore, just use endnote. (Although I prefer the internal citation manager in OpenOffice, mainly because it's free.)

Peter Wood
21:06 on 23 March 2011