Information sources
You can find information in many ways and in many places, for instance by using search engines like Google or the (digital) sources the library offers.
Internet offers more and more information, but not handily collected in one place, with questionable quality and sometimes behind a log-in page or paywall...
Did you know that:
That why popular search engines can lead to problems when you are searching for (scientific) information. As you can see in the picture below, only a very small portion of the internet (the visible web) is reachable by everyone.
To find all relevant publications about your topic, you should use the sources that the library recommends and has subscriptions to. These sources are search in the deep web to, are checked for quality and reliability, and offer information in a structured way.
A catalogue contains a description of books, journals and audiovisual material, including where you can find them. The location information is either a link to the digital copy or a location code of where the printed book is in the bookcases of the library.
To browse and search in the collection of the Hanze Library, you can use HanzeWorldCat. This is our digital catalogue.
A database contains the bibliographic reference and sometimes the full-text version of scientific publications (often journal articles).
Types of databases:
Reference works contain a whole series of short explanations about a word, person or concept. We are talking about dictionaries and encyclopedia's, which you can use to find definitions, translations, explanations and synonyms of (search) terms.
Types of reference works:
It's important to be aware of the type of information you're looking for. If you have a clear idea of what you want to find, it is also easier to make decisions in the search process, such as where you want to start. Here are some handy tips:
What sources should I use?
Reference works: handy when you are looking for general information about a concept (encyclopedia) or a word (dictionary).
Why?
Sometimes only a printed edition of a reference work is available. You will have to come to the library to explore them.
What sources should I use?
Why?
The internet contains an insane amount of information. It's quite a challenge to find exactly what you're looking for in this sea of information. Here are some tips to make searching with an search engine more efficient.
These tips for typing your Google search can help you search more efficiently with search engines (especially Google):
Search engines often have an advanced search too, which is handy, but limited in options compared to the advanced search options in databases.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar sits between a database and a search engine, and is therefore also called a scientific search engine. It has the looks of normal Google, but the big difference is that the search results are only citations and links to scientific/academic literature. These results will also pop up in normal Google, but with so many more results around it, that it's harder to find.
Google Scholar sorts results on relevance. The full-text version of the articles are checked for relevant search terms, and it keeps the (fame of the) journal, the author and the number of citations in mind when checking the relevance of a result.
Click the link to open Google Scholar, or check out the Minilecture to learn more tips and tricks in Google Scholar.