Researching your assignment, where do you start?

Before you jump onto Google or one of the databases take a few moments to work out exactly what you are looking for. These tips will help keep you stay on track. 

Step 1: Take a moment
Try and summarise in a sentence what you are really looking for.
What type of information are you after? Do you need market or industry research? Some statistics? Company information?

Step 2: What words to use
Once you have clarified what you require and have written it down, identify the key words or search terms or concepts that match what you are looking for. 

Step 3: Jump online
Use the Advanced Search options in Google or the databases. This will help you to combine these search terms.

Step 4: Refine, refine, refine
Got a few things that are close? If you are using a database check what subject terms or keywords they use. Then use those search terms to refine your search. There may be a better term to use, most databases have a thesaurus, have a look at what terms they use. Some databases suggest topics at the top of the page or have a ‘Find More Like This’ link.

Step 5: Ask for help
If you haven’t found what you are looking for, or feel like you are on the right track in 10mins Ask A Librarian. Seriously, we can assist with advice on which are the best resources to use and how to use them.

Where would you go to find information on how online tourism companies make money from hotel bookings?

Business Source Premier

The database covers reputable international business publications including the world’s top management and marketing journals, as well as magazines in the fields of management, economics, banking, finance, accounting, international business, and other related disciplines.

Full-text access has steadily increased the number of titles indexed and abstracted, with over 8,000 journal titles now accessible. Additional non-journal full-text content includes: market research reports, industry profiles, country economic reports & surveys, detailed company profiles for the world’s 5,000 largest companies, and SWOT analyses.
The database is easy to use and the content is being updated constantly.

Searching
If you stay in the Basic default search (using subject terms, random keywords), BSP provides a useful display that allows you to filter your results quickly and easily by type.

For example, a keyword search on , will bring up results listed in date order, which you can scroll through. If you have more than 50 hits on your search, you can refine your search with more keywords, or use the hyperlinks that appear on the left-hand side of the screen. The screen shot below shows the associated subjects that were returned for the ‘transport’ query

The database also clusters results into categories for you. The search on sorted the results into the following categories, all hyperlinked to a treasure-trove of content.

Academic Journals Trade Publications Magazines Company Profiles SWOT Analyses Country Reports
Industry Profiles Market Research Reports Product Reviews


Personalise feature
To save searches and results for future sessions, it’s worth taking a few minutes to create a personalised sign-in, which gives you access to a personal area you can use to collect your search strategies and search results into your own personal folder, called My Folder.

Once you’ve done this, saving your search results is easy. Just click on the button appearing just to the right of your search results, and the items are automatically added to your personalised folder only you can access.

[This post was adapted from issue 3 of Franklly: Newsletter of the Frank Lowy Library]