What IS a research database?
"Snowballing Technique"
Building your bibliography is like making a snowball, add layers until it is the right size.
How do you know when you have enough?
From:
Health Sciences Literature Review Made Easy: The Matrix Method.
Search effectively!
Try using a search strategy worksheet to identify key concepts in your topic:
See this handout for examples of the use of Boolean connectors.
" Grey (the preferred spelling) literature is commonly defined as any documentary material that is not commercially published and is typically composed of technical reports, working papers, and conference proceedings. The greatest challenges...are the process of identification,...Added to this is the absence of editorial control, raising questions about authenticity and reliability. Yet despite these considerations, gray literature is continually referenced in scholarly articles and dissertations and therefore remains an issue "(from third link below).
Learn from your initial search results!
Examine the bibliographic records of relevant articles:
This helpful handout can help YOU do precise, targeted, and comprehensive searches!
From Richard Jizba at Creighton University Health Sciences Library.
Examine the references in relevant articles:
Do a Cited Reference Search of a significant article:
Use the databases listed below to do a cited reference search:
Automatically updating your seaching can be facilitated by using techniques like these:
RSS and alerts info from MIT From the MIT site:
" RSS feeds and email alerts can help you find out about new literature in your field, such as:
EBSCO Alerts. From EBSCO: "Search Alerts save valuable research time, and can be set up to provide automatic e-mail notification whenever new search results become available. You can also retrieve those alerts to perform the search immediately, instead of waiting for the alert to run."