You could ask yourself a couple of questions in relation to an effective search strategy:
What am I searching for?
a. What is the subject of your search?
b. What types of documents contain the relevant information?
Then formulate a clear search question with the most useful search terms.
Where to search?
Choose the most suitable database/catalogue/website etc.: your choice is dependent on the answers to questions 1a and 1b. The library gives access to search engines for each discipline.
How to search?
a. Perform an efficient search: use relevant search terms and make use of the functionalities of the databases and search engines (search techniques).
b. There are several search methods. The bibliographic method (entering search terms in scientific search engines) and the snowball/citation search method (basing your search on something you already found) are the major ones. How to use these methods exactly depends on the options the search engines offer.
Can I use the sources I find and how do I select/assess the results?
Before you use the sources you found, you need to evaluate their relevance and scientific nature. This increases the reliability of your text. For answers to these questions, visit the LibGuide Evaluating sources.
Snowball method: You search on the basis of a suitable publication you have found earlier. For example other publications by the same author, or you go searching for other sources in the reading list of a relevant publication (authors make use of the work of others as a source for their own work, these sources will be mentioned in the reading list of the new publication). This way of searching for references goes back in time to older publications.
Citation searching: see if the article you found has been cited, and if so, have a look at this new article. If this article is also relevant you can see if this article has also been cited, and so on. Use a citation database, like Web of Science, Scopus or search Google Scholar. This search method goes forward in time to newer articles. Please take into account that a recent article may have no citations yet or only just a few.
Catalogue method: Searching with search terms of your own choosing in a search engine that makes literature in a certain collection/collection searchable. For example in WorldCat.
Systematic method: you search on the basis of (combined) search terms in search engines which make literature in a certain discipline (or all disciplines) searchable (regardless of availability) with the intention of finding as much literature as possible on that subject. You may expand (adding search terms you have found) or limit (cancelling search terms or filter on year of publication). You can use several search techniques in the systematic method.
When doing longer papers, reports or a thesis it is sensible to make an explicit search profile as part of your search strategy. A search profile details:
At least once try to write all these choices down to force yourself to make them explicit. During your search you can add things or eliminate them when they do not prove fruitful.
If you use more than one search term in your search, most search engines will look for documents in which all entered terms occur. Would you like to combine search terms in another way? In that case, you need to use so-called operators. This search method is also called a Boolean search (after George Boole).
The operators most frequently used:
You can combine operators, much like in mathematical equations. ‘AND’ takes priority unless you use brackets to group concepts: (youth OR adolescent* OR "young adults") AND (bully* OR "peer harassment").
Please take note: operators and wildcards may differ among search engines.
Other techniques you can use: