What is your information need? Do you require a definition, a conceptual framework, research, an overview, an article?
What are the information resources available to you?
Your information need must match your information resource.
Information resources include but are not limited to the following (which are available in both electronic and print formats):
Note: You do not look for definitions in a journal, neither do you look for research in a text book.
Some database providers include:
Caribbean Disaster Information Network
Which database provider gives access to the resource you need to search having identified your need?
Remember different platforms/database providers will allow access to any combination of the resources identified in step 2 (of course paid for/subscribed to, by your university library)
Having selected your database how do you begin to search? You have two major options:
A keyword search: Finds records where the word or combination of words is mentioned in designated fields from an online catalog or database. You will get a lot of records, some (if not most of which) may be irrelevant.
A subject search: Uniform words representing the same concept or theory or idea that you are researching. In addition to ‘subject search’, you may hear other terms like, ‘thesaurus’, ‘controlled vocabulary’, ‘index terms’, ‘descriptors’ etc. They are really standardized words or phrases that each database will assign to books and articles to make your search easy. Librarians and information professionals try to think like you in applying descriptors to items. It means that you can use several different terms to yield relevant results for your search, because the terms are related to each other and will point to similar items that you may retrieve.
Developing a good research question can sometimes be the most difficult part of the research process. If you are struggling, follow the links below.
