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How-to handouts and videos about effective lit-searching

Think of these handouts as lecture notes for what Bruce Pencek said (tried to say... meant to say... should have said... ) in class or a research consultation. 

Be a goal-directed, situationally aware searcher

Bruce Pencek's system of search techniques to discover and acquire relevant research sources efficiently -- so you can manage your time and effort. These tips will be incrementally updated as the VT Libraries' discovery system and catalog, Discovery Search (aka Primo), is refined.

Handouts

I. When to search "the literature"... for the feasibility of the research plan, for primary and secondary sources relevant to the research question, and for making sure you've covered all bases on your answer to your question when you write your paper.

II. Situationally aware (re)searching. We suffer from too much information.  So identifying your goal, planning ahead, and then applying what you learn in each stage are vital to research success.  This handout offers prompts and a sequence of stages -- and the appropriate tools for each -- to keep your research on target.

  • Generative artificial intelligence (ChatGPT, Copilot, Genesis...) is only as effective as the prompts you give it: write a mushy question or give a vague instruction, and the AI will give you a vague, mushy (and sometimes bogus) answer. The same habits of mind and tools that enable sound manual searching also help you think about how to direct AIs precisely to the information you need.

III. Operationalize and organize. A one-page grid framework for laying our your search as part of your research design, aligned with social science concerns for identifying concepts/variables, relationships, explanations, and evidence.

IV. Get tactical. Tips to give you better search results in less time.

  • What's the use of Discovery Search?  Pencek's take on the uses and disadvantages of the big, unlabeled search system on the VT Libraries' homepage, but applicable to similar systems used in other libraries.
  • What kind of "article" am I looking at?  Some pointers for when you encounter things that look like articles so you can decide if they are appropriate for your project.  Compares characteristics, content, and information timelines for sorting out popular, trade, and academic publications.
  • Bibliographic speed dating. Illustrates use of overlooked search history (aka recent searches) functions in many subject databases to speed you through finding sources relevant to  your  research question. 
  • Search better using power words. Accelerate finding relevant books by apply this list of "inside libraries" keywords in VT Discovery Search, other library catalogs, and even many article databases.
  • You can't search NEAR enough: "proximity" searching.  Reduce noisy results in full-text databases (and Google) by using the precise NEAR command (and its relatives) instead of the clumsy Boolean AND. Includes table of proximity syntax for several database and publisher platforms.

Fine print:  Pencek's handouts are published in this guide under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. So you can adapt, slice, and dice the files for reuse, provided that you give me appropriate credit, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests that Bruce Pencek endorses you or your (re)use of his content.

Odyssey, our "learning object repository," offers a growing list of how-to videos and handouts, about the mechanics of using Virginia Tech Libraries' digital and physical resources, including

Annotated bibliographies