WISER: Electronic Resources for Research : notes

  • Oxlip allows access to hundreds of electronic resources including indexing and abstracting services, electronic journals, full-text resources, online reference works, statistical databases and library catalogues.
  • To access Oxlip go direct to or from University homepage choose electronic resources in bottom left-hand corner
  • In order to locate a specific database you can use the Title list which provides an A-Z index to resources. To see the range of resources relevant to a particular subject you can use the subject view. A brief description of each resource is provided.
  • Collections of resources are often available from a particular supplier allowing searching across databases and offering a common interface. Examples of these collections include Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Ovid, OCLC Firstsearch, Webspirs and Eureka. Many of these databases are subject focused indexes to journal literature.
  • Web of Knowledge is a journal index which also allows you to track citations.
  • Zetoc is a current awareness tool that will email you the contents pages of selected journals as they are published
  • TD-Net indexes full-text electronic journals.
  • By choosing the Oxlip link for Electronic journals and e-books you can access collections of e-journals such as JSTOR. Humanities scholars can access collections of e-books such as Past Masters.
  • Catalogues - to locate books, print journals and many other library resources in Oxford you should use the OLIS catalogue. You can also check the catalogues of the British Library or COPAC (a union catalogue of major UK libraries) as well as international collections such as Worldcat.
  • To look for dissertations and theses you can use the Theses Index (UK) or Dissertations Abstracts (North America)
  • Conference papers are indexed in Proceedings – which includes citations from conference papers received at the British Library since 1993.
  • Web resources – try Intute for good quality academic sites or Scirus for quality science information on the web or Google Scholar. Some libraries have created webpages to help you locate useful resources on the web. Jiscmail.ac.uk is a good place if you want to identify academic mailing lists to join.
  • Refworks and Endnote are reference software which you can use to manage the references you find

Access to OxLIP

  • Access from any OxfordUniversity computer usually straightforward. If access is needed from a non-University PC:
  • Should be arranged before leaving Oxford
  • Register for a personal Athens account
  • If database does not use Athens contact OUCS to arrange remote access to the OxfordUniversity network
  • OxLIP from outside Oxford : Athens and VPN (Virtual Private Network)
  • Athens password
  • Frequently asked questions, including further informationon database and electronic journal access, are available @

Some Suggested Search Strategies

  • Ask a clear search question
  • Break the question into search concepts
  • Identify a range of search terms
  • Consider the relationships between your search terms
  • Try those terms in appropriate databases/resources
  • Find more search terms from retrieved records while searching

Keyword searching

  • Searches for terms anywhere in the field or record
  • Useful as a starting place but results can be less relevant

Subject indexes

  • Where possible tap into the subject headings or thesauri provided by the databases

Use Boolean operators where possible to combine search terms. “And” means both or all your terms must be there, “Or” means either term would be acceptable, “Not” means exclude a term and “Near” allows you to specific how close together terms should be.

How to Approach an Unfamiliar Database:

  • You can use cross-searching for some collections of databases to identify concentrations of useful references
  • Use the help screens provided – check the specific conventions (eg do they use &, +, or “and”)
  • Apply truncation, usually * to find plurals/alternative word endings and ? to replace a single character.
  • Expand search by following hypertext links, e.g. for alternative subject headings.
  • Use facilities within database to mark articles for printing, emailing, downloading or exporting.

Contacts for help

If we can be of any further assistance please contact us:

You may also wish to contact your subject librarian for assistance

see

Further training sessions may be of interest to you – for details go to: