Literature searching and databases for Social and Historical sciences (Location: Bloomsbury)

This practical session explores the importance of searching for literature beyond Google Scholar, and looks at the range of library databases available within the Social and Historical Sciences, ranging from key bibliographic databases like SCOPUS, Web of Science and ProQuest resources, to newspaper archives, theses repositories and using other academic libraries. Students will experience searching these resources themselves, using their own search topics.

By the end of the session students will be able to:

• Identify relevant databases for their subject area
• Formulate a search strategy based on a research question
• Utilise search techniques such as Boolean operators, phrase searching and truncation
• Develop an effective literature search independently across a variety of resources
• Output results and locate full text items
• Save searches and alerts
• Know how to seek further help and training in areas such as bibliometrics, RDM, copyright & reference management software.

This session is part of the Doctoral School Skills Development programme. Postgraduate research students should book by logging in via the programme website.