E-RESOURCES (Theory)

ILS-2017
 Objectives
By the end of the presentation students should
be able to:
• Define E-Resources,
• List major E-Resources used at CUT,
• Know the Benefits of E-Resources,
• Evaluate E-Resources,
• Save Information downloaded from E-
Resources
 Internet

• A means of connecting a computer to any other computer

anywhere in the world via dedicated routers and servers. .

• When two computers are connected over the Internet,

they can send and receive all kinds of information such as
text, graphics, voice, video, and computer programs.
 Database
• A database is a collection of information that is
organized so that it can be easily accessed,
managed and updated.
• Data is organized into rows, columns and tables,
and it is indexed to make it easier to find relevant
information.
• Data gets updated, expanded and deleted as new
information is added. Databases process
workloads to create and update themselves,
querying the data they contain and running
applications against it.
 Electronic resources Definition
• Any information source that the library
provides access to in an electronic format.

• The library has purchased subscriptions to

many electronic information resources in
order to provide you with access to them
free of charge
 Examples of E-resources
• electronic journals (e-journal),

• electronic books (e-book),

• online databases in varied digital formats,

Adobe Acrobat documents (.pdf), WebPages
(.htm, .html, .asp etc) and more.
 E-Journals
• An electronic journal is a periodical
publication which is published
in electronicformat, usually on the Internet. 

• Electronic journals have several advantages

over traditional printed journals: You can
search the contents pages and/or the full text
ofjournals to find articles on a certain subject.
 E-Books
• An electronic book (or e-book) is
a book publication made available in digital
form, consisting of text, images, or both,
readable on the flat-panel display of
computers or other electronic devices.
• Commercially produced and sold e-books are
usually intended to be read on dedicated e-
reader devices
 Online Databases
• An online database is a database accessible
from a local network or the Internet, as
opposed to one that is stored locally on an
individual computer or its attached storage
(such as a CD). 
• Online databases are hosted on websites,
made available as software as a service
products accessible via a web browser.
 Examples of electronic resources at cut
• Proquest Ebook Central 

• EBSCOHost 

• Elsevier Science Direct 

• CUT Institutional Repository

• Henry Stewart Talks Online

*Can be accessed via : www.cut.ac.zw/library/

ProQuest E-Book Central
EBSCOhost
Henry Stewart Talks
 Benefits of E-Resources to students
• Least reliance on physical structure of
libraries,

• More dependence on the online world,

• Convenience and instant availability,

• Get satisfied with whatever is easily available

even at the cost of standard and quality
Benefits of E-Resources to students cont…
• Accessible: can be accessed from any computer
on campus any time of the day or night, so there
is no need to make a trip to the library,

• Easily searchable - each journal can be searched

quick and easy often through the complete full
text of articles and via online index,

• Interactive - Rapid turnaround time means

articles can be read, commented by the readers,
amended quickly and greater feedback through
the web
Benefits of E-Resources to students cont…
• Email alerts when latest issue is loaded,

• Virtual reality and interactive,

• Inexpensive - savings can be made over printing costs,

distribution costs and extra costs by new features,

• Flexibility - E-journals evolved quickly. They are not

tied to a format, printer, and distribution network,

• Speed - Articles/issues  appear online before printed

version is available.
 Search Engines

•  are programs that search documents for

specified keywords and returns a list of the
documents where the keywords were found.

• A search engine is really a general class of

programs, however, the term is often used to
specifically describe systems like Google, Bing
and Yahoo!
Google: Popular search Engine
 Internet Browsers
• A web browser (commonly referred to as
a browser) is a software application for
retrieving, presenting and traversing information
resources on the World Wide Web.

• Although browsers are primarily intended to use

the World Wide Web, they can also be used to
access information provided by web
servers in private networks or files in file systems
 Internet Browsers

Opera, Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explora

 Evaluating E-resources
• Purpose
• Authority
• Accuracy
• Objectivity
• Currency
• Coverage/Scope
• Accessibility
• Technical Considerations
 Purpose

• ✓ Know exactly what information is relevant

to your research question: facts, opinions,
statistics, background, etc.

• ✓ Test the resources located against your

purpose.
 Authority
• ✓ Who wrote this document?

• ✓ Is the publisher reputable?

• ✓ Who can be contacted for more information?

• ✓ Is the author qualified to write this?

• ✓ Is the material copyrighted?

 Accuracy
• ✓ Is the information timely?
• ✓ Is the information error free (typos, grammar,
spelling)?
• ✓ Is the information sufficiently detailed and
comprehensive for the stated purpose of the
research?
• ✓ Is the information vague?
• ✓ Is the information one-sided?
• ✓ Is the information supported by citations to
other sources?
• ✓ Is the information organized for easy reading
(charts, graphs, etc.)?
 Objectivity
• ✓ Is the information biased?

• ✓ Does it acknowledge the other side’s

arguments?

• ✓ Is it intended to sway the audience?

• ✓ Is advertising on the page clearly related to

the content presented?
 Currency
• ✓ When was the material last updated?

• ✓ Is it a work in progress?

• ✓ Are cited sources up to date?

• ✓ Are previous editions acknowledged and

possibly made available for comparison?
 Coverage
• Areas/Subject covered?

• Is it indepth?
 Accessibility
• Is the information Accessible?

• Can it be downloaded?
 LOCATING INFORMATION
• You can use the following tools to
find information:

–Library catalogue (OPAC)

–Library website
–Internet search engines
 How To Save Information
• Save early, save often. Follow that rule and you will be
happy in your relationship with saving.

• To save a file means to store it on some permanent

medium such as hour hard drive of a CD-ROM.

• Saving a file involves (1) giving it a name that relates to

its content; (2) putting the file in a place you can find it;
and (3) using your computer to make a digital record. It
is one of the most fundamental and critically important
of all computer processes.
How To Save Information cont..
• When you first create a file, it is saved in
temporary memory. Should your computer
lose power or should you turn off your
computer, the file will disappear.

• To actually save the file you have to transfer it

from temporary to permanent memory. That
involves putting the file on some sort of
storage medium like a hard drive, USB drive,
or CD-ROM.
 How To Save Information
cont…
• When you save a document for the first time,
you will need to supply a name for that
document. To do that go to File > Save As.

• The File dropdown menu appears. Note that

our friend the ellipsis (...) is attached to the
command. When you click Save As, an
onscreen box will appear onscreen asking you
to make some choices.
 How To Save Information cont…
• Near the bottom of the box you should fill in a
name where there is a blank next to File Name.
When deciding on a name, try to make it have
something to do with the file's actual content.

• Also, try to be consistent in how you name files.

This will help you remember the names when
you want to open that saved file. Notice that the
file at right is being saved to "My Documents".
(under the blue bar.) This is a convenient place to
store your files. Another convenient place to
locate these files is on the Desktop.
How To Save Information cont…
• After you have named the file, that name will
appear in the blue bar at the top of your screen.
If it does not appear, then you have not saved
properly. Just repeat the process in this case.

• You only need to do a Save As one time for any

document. However, you can do it a second time
to save a copy of the document under a separate
name. Once the Save As process is complete,
simply do File > Save or use the keyboard
shortcut Ctrl + S to save your files as you work.
SEARCH STRATEGIES

ILS-2017
 Objectives
Students should be able to:
• understand the importance of effective searching,

• develop guidelines for planning and implementing

searches,

• understand and gain experience of structuring

effective searches,

• gain theoretical experience of effective searching

in a range of electronic information environments
 SEARCH STRATEGY
• A search strategy is a structured organisation
of terms used to search a database. 

• The search strategy shows how these terms

combine in order to retrieve the best results.

*****Different databases work in different

ways, so you need to adapt your search
strategy for each of the databases you use
 Importance of Search Strategy
• Find the materials we want amongst the huge
number of online resources available

• Google claims it searches >3 billion web pages

• More than 20,000 full text journals are online
• Newspapers, databases, books, company web pages,
dictionaries, encyclopaedias, individual home pages,
etc, are also online.

• Make efficient use of limited access to PCs and

bandwidth
• Save time and money
 Planning a search strategy
Define your information need (1)

Decide which sources to use (2)

Find out how they function (3)

Run your search (4)

Review and refine you search (5)

*****This process can be started away from the

computer
 Define your information need(1)
• Careful choice of search term(s) is vital
• What key words do you think will appear on
the site/article you want?
• What key concepts is it a part of or related to?
• Are there any synonyms for these keywords or
concepts?
• Are there any alternative spellings for your
keywords/concepts
• Are plurals or capitalisation involved?
 Decide which sources to use (2)
• What sources are appropriate for your
information need?
• Individuals’ and organisations’ home pages
• Newspapers and magazines
• Subject gateways, databases, catalogues
• Journals—titles, abstracts or full text
• Reference resources, e.g., encyclopaedias,
dictionaries
• Books
• Grey literature, e.g. government publications
• Print or electronic
 How they function (3)
• Electronic search tools may interpret your
search terms using
• Boolean operators
• Phrase and proximity searching
• Truncation or wildcard functions
• Case sensitivity
• Fields
• Stop words
• Relevance sorting
 Boolean searching
• Uses commands (operators) such as AND, OR,
NOT

• Different search tools may use different symbols

AND + NOT –

• Different search tools may use OR or AND as a

default setting

• Sometimes Boolean operators must be entered

in capital letters
AND, OR & NOT
 Phrase and proximity searching

• Using quotation marks allows you to search

for an exact phrase, e.g. “information literacy”

• Using NEAR allows you to specify how close to

each other the terms you are searching for
should be
 Truncation or wildcard searches
• Truncation: place a symbol at the end of the word so
you search for variant endings of that word,

• e.g. litera$ would look for literature, literacy, literal,

• Wildcards: place a symbol within a word to find

variations on it,

• e.g. analy*e would find analyse or analyse,

• Different symbols - including $ * # ! : - are used by

different search tools
 Other variations in search tools
• Case sensitivity: use of upper or lower case in search
terms,

• Fields: searches in fields such as the title, URL or links,

• Stop words: searches may ignore common words such

as ‘and’, ‘if’, ‘an’, ‘the’,

• Relevance sorting: relevance is measured in different

ways in different search tools,

• Brackets may be used to order the search, e.g. (literacy

AND education) NOT secondary
 Citation searching

• Also known as ‘cited reference searching’,

• Finds all material that cites a particular work

• Many electronic resources provide easy to use

citation searching or include facilities that offer
this

• Useful when cited work is of a high quality, by

leaders in a field
 Run the search (4)
• Take the terms/keywords you have decided on

• Find the sources you are going to search

• Read the ‘Help’ page to find out how that

particular source uses Boolean commands,
wildcards, etc

• Run the search

Review and revise your search (5)
Hopefully you have found what are looking for,
or at least places to start from, but

Be prepared to review and revise your search

scope and strategy

Try new sources of information (familiarity is

sometimes too easy)

Start again near the beginning of this process if

you need to
 Remember
• Never use phrases if you are looking for some
topic or subject

• Use complete phrases only when you are looking

for the exact phrase

• Break your concept in key concepts or terms z

Before starting searching think (WWH) what,
where and How

• It will save your time and bandwidth

 Summary
Developing and encouraging people to use effective
searching strategies is essential

The use of a search strategy checklist should be

encouraged

Understand and use advanced searching

Boolean searches are powerful and under used

Learn the search routines for all packages and

electronic information sources