Research is the process of searching for and collecting information on a narrow or broad research topic. These types of information may include journal articles, web pages, books, magazine and newspaper articles, film and audio, and archival material.
There are several places for you to research. As a researcher, you will need to keep track of the data you collect. You will use this data as evidence to answer your research question. This data will help prove your phenomenon. This allows for trends to be identified and future predictions to be inferred.
Click on the links below to search through these.
These include:
Databases hold journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles, and more. Search these to find peer-reviewed articles.
Peer-reviewed articles are articles that have been reviewed by experts in the field of the topic, that verify that the research is credible.
eBooks are online books that you can read, search for keywords, copy and paste information and highlight the book online. You can read these by logging in using your Moodle sign-on if you are an AFTRS student or staff member.
Google Scholar is a part of Google, that allows you to search for peer-reviewed journal articles, case studies, and thesis papers. If you find an article that you cannot access, please contact the library.
Keywords are search terms that you enter into a database to describe the topic of items that you want to retrieve. The database will word-match your keywords against the text of the article, and deliver results that match what you enter.
You can tell the database how to look for those words by applying limiters. Limiters allow you to search for specific date of publication, material type(journal, newspaper, magazine, etc.), full-text, peer-reviewed articles, publication by name.
The benefit of keyword searching is precision. You can develop focused, precise searches in a library database, and get exactly what you need. It will require a little practice to become an expert searcher.
Databases can only word-match as it looks for the exact words and phrases you type in. This means you must:
There are 4 Steps in Building a Keyword Search Strategy:
Boolean Operators are words that you use while searching to combine or eliminate concepts. These words are:
You can use nesting logic to specify the order in which operators are performed.
For example, searching film music AND narrative or identity in music will perform a search for film music first and then narrative or identity in music.
Searching film music and narrative OR identity in music will perform a search for film music and narrative first, then identity in music.
Bracketed operators will be performed first. E.g., (film music AND narrative) OR identity in music.
Phrase searching uses quotation marks to avoid separating a phrase term. E.g., "fourth Industrial revolution".