Once you have determined your topic, defined your (re)search question and gathered search terms, you can start looking for relevant resources for your research.
Think about the aim and context of your research. Do you want to support your argument with academic resources? Do you need topical information about your area of study? Or do you need statistical information to support your research? You will find this information in different types of resources, such as academic journals, professional magazines, databases with company info, newspapers etc.
Make sure you have a good idea of which types of resources are available to you. An overview of the resources of BUas Library can be found in this libguide. Below, you will find video's explaining why you need library resources and how to select relevant resources.
On this page, you will find an overview of information resources to use for literature research:
Use reference works to (quickly) search for general information about your topic. In reference works you will find definitions, synonyms, translations etc. Via BUas Library, the following reference works are available:
Search Engines
For the orientation on your topic you can use search engines to get access to the enormous amount of information that is available via the World Wide Web:
Google and Bing
Search engines, such as Google en Bing give access to the freely available information on the World Wide Web. It can be quite difficult to find the information that is relevant to you in the enormous amount of information that is available. In the box Search Methods on this page (see below), you will get some tips & tricks about searching the internet efficiently.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a private search engine and protects your privacy when browsing the World Wide Web. Personal data of users will not be shared with others. In case you would like to execute a particular search query in Google while you are using DuckDuckGo, type !g behind your search query in the DuckDuckGo search bar.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar enables you to search for scholarly articles. The Google Scholar search results will link you to free (open access) content, as well as websites that ask for payment to access full-text articles. When searching Google Scholar at BUas you can also find results which mention find@buas. When you click on this text you will be directly linked to the fulltext article in one of the Buas library databases.
In library catalogues, you will find title descriptions of publications and other materials with a reference to the place where you can find these. A few examples of library catalogues:
Library Databases
BUas databases A-Z
On the BUas Library website, you will find a overview of databases. You can either choose for an overview of databases per domain or for the complete list that is available.
Once you have determined your topic and formulated a search question you start gathering search terms. This is very important, as using the right search terms will give you relevant search results. You can use a mind map to gather search terms systematically. Use combinations of search terms to search more specifically.
How to find the right search terms? Use the tools below for finding good search terms:
Dutch/ English/German/French/Italian/Spanish/Portuges-Dutch v.v.
Free online dictionary (English-English)
Free online dictionary (English-English)
Thesaurus / synonyms
In a thesaurus you will find a list of synonyms and related terms.
Free online thesaurus (English-English)
Generating search terms
Use search methods to specify your search results. Here are a few examples of methods you can apply:
Pear growing is using one information item (like a search term/keyword or citation) to find more information. This method involves searching in Library cataloges or databases using search terms/keywords. Look through the initial search results and try to find better search terms, then search further using the new terms.
Snowballing is tracking down references (or citations) in documents. The snowball method is a way of finding literature by using a key document on your subject as a starting point. Consult the reference list in the key document (=book or journal article) to find other relevant titles on your subject. You then look in the reference lists of these new publications to find yet more relevant titles.
The advantage of the snowball method is that you can find a lot of literature about a subject quickly and relatively easily. The disadvantage of this method is that you are searching retrospectively, so each source you find will be older than the previous one (especially in the case of books).
Many of the publications you find will contain relevant bibliographies. The disadvantage is that these titles always pre-date the publication in which they are mentioned. Citation searches reverse this process: who has cited the publication you have found? In this way you will find recent literature.
With the help of the building blocks method, you can search systematically. You work from core elements or concepts (=building blocks). It is a way to combine as many search terms as possible in one search query. The aim is to find as much relevant literature as possible for your research. The search terms that you use in a bibliographic or full-text file will influence the result.
You can use the boolean search operators AND, OR and NOT to combine search terms.
The operators AND and NOT limit the number of results from a search. The operator OR increases the number of results.
Examples:
To see how this works, take a look at The Boolean machine. Move your cursor over the operators AND, OR and NOT to see how they determine your search.
You can also combine more than two search terms. Use brackets to indicate the priority. For example (Leisure OR tourism) AND sustainability.
Phrase search is searching for an exact combination of words (exact phrase). You can put combinations of words or whole sentences in between quotation marks, such as "mountain biking" in the example above. Such a combination will then occur exactly as quoted in the documents found. This is very useful if you are searching for a name, a compound or a title.
Truncation or wildcard symbols can be used to broaden your search and include different spellings. To do this, you shorten the search term to a word stem and, depending on which database you are using, you type either a question mark or asterisk after the word stem. The results will then include various endings and spellings.
If you search for environ*, the results will include publications with ‘environment’, ‘environmental’ and ‘environmentally’ in the text and/or title.
A question mark replaces a letter in a word; the results include British as well as American spellings.
For example, if you search for
organi?ation, the results will include the British English spelling (organisation) as well as the American English spelling (organization).
You can use filters and/or limiters to narrow down your search results. In most (library) databases the advanced search option offers possibilities to specify you results, using filters and/or limiters, such as: full text, source type, language, geographical location, peer reviewed, and more.
In the videos on the left hand side you can find more examples of these search techniques.
Watch this video on how to search efficiently for relevant information:
Here you will find a direct link to the Library Catalogue. In the Library Catalogue you will find descriptions of (study)books, e-books, academic journals, professional magazines and reports. In the description of each title you will be referred to the location of the publication, via either a shelf mark or a link to a digital publication. Below, you will find several knowledge clips on how to search the Library Catalogue:
Below, you fill find more knowledge clips on how to search the library catalogue for e-books, and on how to reserve and renew items:
The Metasearch engine enables you to search both the library catalogue and several library databases simultaneously, such as Business Source Premier, Ebsco e-Books, Emerald, Hospitality and Tourism Complete (Ebsco), Sage Online Journals, Springer Journals, ScienceDirect (Elsevier), Taylor and Francis, Wiley Online Library.
Go to the Metasearch engine
In the video below, you will get tips & tricks on how to search the Metasearch engine for relevant information:
Google Scholar gives you access to scholarly Open Access publications as well as to publications that are available via the BUas Library Databases. Check out this video on how to search Google Scholar.
The Library provides you with access to databases in every knowledge field of Breda University of Applied Sciences. How can you access these databases?
The Library provides you with access to (digital) journals within every knowledge field of Breda University of Applied Sciences. Please use the link below to get access to a selection of important journals for your academy:
Library guides (Libguides) are subject-based help guides, that offer a selection of high quality information resources on a wide array of disciplines. They are created and maintained by subject specialists of the Library. For an overview of available Libguides, see: