Sam Aston

10 Top tips for avoiding information overload

Sam Aston

Sam Aston

Summary and Objectives

• General advice, not prescriptive

• Searching advice

• Personalisation

• Online bookmarking tools

• Current awareness services

Sam Aston

No. 10. Time

• Schedule your work

• Schedule your down time

• Make use of ‘dead time’

Sam Aston

No. 9. Distracting technology

• Telephone

• PDAs

• E-mail

• Instant messaging

• Online chat

Sam Aston

• Construct a systematic search• Write a search profile

– What is the topic?– What are trying to find out…the aim?– What is the research question

• If it helps keep a notebook/diary• Think of useful keywords and synonyms

No.8. Take control of your search

Sam Aston

Example Search Profile

• Topic

• Research Question

• Aim of the Investigation– Parameters– Time– Place

• Languages

• Keywords

Sam Aston

No. 7. Discovery tools

• Fit for purpose– Subject– Date coverage– Documents– Organisation– Publisher– Record the discovery tools that you use!

Sam Aston

No. 6. Advanced search

• Further refines results

• Applies to databases & search engines

• Apply limiters

• Use Boolean searching

Sam Aston

Search techniques

• Boolean logic – (AND, OR & NOT) (University of Leicester)

• AND will link the terms to find only articles that mention both concepts – eg: tobacco AND advertising

• OR will broaden the search by looking for synonyms, alternative spellings, abbreviations and plurals – eg: United Nations OR UN

• NOT can be used when you need to narrow the search by excluding certain keywords or concepts – eg: industrial action NOT fire service

Sam Aston

No. 5. Use an aggregator

• ‘Aggregators reduce the amount of time and effort needed to regularly check web sites for updates, creating a unique information space or “newspaper”’ (Wikipedia)

• ‘Pulled’ rather then ‘pushed’• Easy to subscribe and unsubscribe• Portals or start pages e.g. igoogle, my Yahoo

Sam Aston

No. 4. Reference Mgmt

• Use reference management software to keep track of references.

• E.g. Endnote/Refworks

• Software will often store articles for you

Sam Aston

No.3. Online bookmarking tool

• Use a bookmarking tool.• Eg. Del.icio.us, Connotea, Zotero.• Student portal

Sam Aston

No. 2. Personalisation

• Personal account within a preferred database.

• Free and easy (though all have different features)

• Saves searches, saves results

• Runs searches for you

Sam Aston

No. 1. Current awareness services

• Current awareness services will alert you when the latest edition of a journal is published.

• E-mail • RSS Feed • Zetoc• Tic Tocs

Sam Aston

A Happy Ending!

Sam Aston

Your turn

• Beginning at the Library home page set up an alert for a journal title in your field.

Sam Aston

Thank you & Evaluation

• Thank you

• Please complete the online evaluation form