Academic Skills Workshops
- Library Essentials: Library Workshops & EventsFind the full Academic Skills Workshop booklet and Library workshop recordings here.
Where to start....
- Understand your topic
- Find academic resources:
- Find industry / company information:
Finding Academic Resources
If you are a new student or returning to study, take some time to view this short video on how to search ECU Library resources.
1. Break your topic into concepts.
e.g. Social entrepreneurship in the Tourism and Hospitality industry.
Concept = Social entrepreneurship
Concept = Tourism
Concept = Hospitality
2. Consider alternative keywords:
Concept = Social enterprise, social innovation
Concept = Travel
3. Use truncation to search for variations of words:
touris* (tourist, tourism)
4. Use inverted comas for phrases:
"social media"
5. Use AND to narrow the search:
AND hospitality
"social entrepreneurship" AND touris*
6. Use OR to broaden the search:
"social entrepr*" OR "social innovat*"
7. Beware of differences between British and American spelling and terminology - use a ? wildcard:
organisation / organization = organi?ation
- Searching using Boolean OperatorsThe Boolean search operators are AND, OR and NOT, and always in capital letters. Use these operators to create a very broad or very narrow search.