Category: In English

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We search, we find… The Search Team at Linköping University Library

**Detta blogginlägg finns också på svenska**

In this blog post, we would like to introduce you to the library’s Search team and share some of our experiences and best advice about how to refine your searches in order to find what you are looking for.

Behind every literature search there is not only a host of algorithms but also a human being. Is it not the searcher who could be said to have most experience of what is searched? Because after all, the searcher is also the one who finds – or put differently, the searcher knows what could possibly be found.

However, a researcher sometimes needs to get on track with his or her searches. This applies to PhD students and senior researchers alike. That is why the Search team at LiU is here to help you sharpen your search skills. No matter where you are in the research process, you are welcome to contact us – but it is an advantage if you have prepared a research inquiry to get as much as possible out of your session with us.

It is also important to have realistic expectations. The library can provide guidance in systematic literature searches, which means that we do not conduct searches for you but show you how to search as efficiently as possible yourself. The library can help you to search more efficiently, but doing searches often requires a lot of work. After all, well-structured searches are more than a quick Google search.

The Search team’s members are Joakim Westerlund, Magdalena Öström, Kerstin Annerbo, Marie-Louise Axelsson, Isolina Ek and Cia Gustrén.

Creativity and hard work

Joakim Westerlund provides search guidance for researchers at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences in various search topics and areas – both larger, systematic searches, introductions and repetitions for new as well as experienced researchers in the field of medicine.

Joakim has worked with searches of different kinds, within different subjects and with different intensity during the whole of his career as a librarian, which is now 24 years. His professional search expertise is within medicine, but he also has a background within technology and the natural sciences.

Joakim emphasizes that creativity, or sometimes “thinking unusual thoughts,” is important but that searching also means hard work. It is a challenge, which also makes it all the fun.

The value of collaboration

Magdalena Öström guides and supports researchers in literature searches within the social sciences (law, economics), behavioural sciences (psychology, pedagogy), natural sciences and technology.

With many years of experience from different units of the University Library as well as the Library of the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI), she has developed an eye for the field of interdisciplinary studies. Professional life has also given her the insight that researchers’ specific subject expertise along with librarians’ skills in information searching, provide added value to the collaborative work of searching for information in a more structured or systematic manner.

Different experiences and backgrounds

Kerstin Annerbo has worked at LiU for more than 20 years. Her current position is mainly directed towards research support. As a member of the Search team, she guides and teaches in information searching and search-related issues within most subjects except law and medicine.

Kerstin agrees that searches require creativity as well as systematicity and patience. Subject specific knowledge and language skills will help, as well as familiarity with search resources, search strategies and techniques. But the primary subject expertise is in the hands of the researcher. This is what makes for good collaboration between researchers and librarians.

The different backgrounds and experiences of the members in the Search team, who also cooperate and work together, is a strength as well. Kerstin, and the rest of us too, wish that more PhD students and senior researchers would find it easy to contact the us whenever they have search-related questions, whether they are minor or of a more comprehensive kind. Or why not book a session with the library for your research group or department?

The importance of documentation

Marie-Louise Axelsson at Campus Valla Library offers search guidance within the behavioural sciences, social sciences and humanities, whereas Isolina Ek at Medical Library mainly guides researchers at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and offers introductions to reference management software like EndNote. Isolina has worked as a librarian within the area of health care for more than 20 years, both at the university library and the hospital’s library.

Both Isolina and Marie-Louise underscore the importance of careful documentation for every search. This affects the final result of the search process. A literature search must be done in several batches, with several complementary searches that add to each other. Documentation facilitates that process. It is also important to document searches for your own benefit, since it is virtually impossible to reconstruct a search afterwards, unless you have saved it and documented how you went about it.

Information searches impact research results

Cia Gustrén has worked as a librarian in the Search team at Campus Norrköping Library since January 2022. Except for being a librarian, she has spent more than 20 years in the academic world and received a doctoral degree in media and communication studies in 2021.

Cia mainly provides search guidance within the humanities, behavioural sciences and social sciences. Above all, she has learned that information searching of the more structured or systematic kind can be a crucial fundament for research as well as the formulation of a research inquiry and eventually research results. Librarians are skilled information searchers and Cia highly recommends researchers to consult the library for good advice whenever they need it.

Her advice is to try different search terms and strategies in order to find those that yield the desired result. Searching is far from a linear process – it can vary depending on which databases or other resources you use. Also, let your search take the time and effort that it requires.

That was a quick introduction to the Search team. Do not hesitate to contact us in case you have any questions. You can reach us through the form Search support for researchers.

Kind regards,
the search team at Linköping University Library

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Collect articles and handle references with a reference manager

**Detta blogginlägg finns också på svenska**

Linköping University Library offers introductions to EndNote and Zotero. These reference management programs serve the same purpose and have similar functions, but are different in design and layout. A reference manager simplifies the process with collecting documents and inserting them as references in word processor documents.

When using a reference manager, there is no need to make lists of documents found in databases and you won’t have to enter references to these documents manually in your texts. This saves time and simplifies the information seeking process.

To clarify, it is not primarily the documents themselves that are collected in a reference manager, but metadata, which is information about documents (such as title, author, publisher, year of publication etc.). A document in this context can be everything from a book and a scholarly article to a working paper, a conference paper, a book chapter, or a newspaper article.

Zotero versus EndNote

The Zotero software can be downloaded for free at the Zotero website. There, you can also download Zotero Collector, a tool for quick and easy download of documents from databases and websites. Zotero Collector is a plugin which is installed in your browser.

This feature is one of the advantages with Zotero compared to EndNote. The latter software has a similar plugin, but this will only help you find PDFs that are possible to download. If you use EndNote, you need to locate the metadata file connected to each document yourself. These are so called RIS files that can typically be found under “Export” or “Cite” in databases.

In contrast to Zotero, EndNote is a subscription-based software, but available at no cost for LiU students and staff via MinIT. A disadvantage with EndNote is that if you want to continue to use it after leaving LiU, you need to pay for a subscription yourself.

More functions

When it comes to additional functions, both EndNote and Zotero offer options to adapt and edit a wide range of reference styles, including the possibility to custom your own style. In both reference managers, you can share your document library with others, allowing group work and collaboration.

Both allow using cloud services, i.e. saving online documents and syncing them with files in your document library in the downloaded (desktop) version of the reference management program. Zotero can be used with Google Docs, which is not the case with EndNote.

A disadvantage with Zotero is that the freely available version has a limited storage capacity of 300 MB. But if there is no need to collect PDFs in Zotero, this will not be a problem. An alternative is to store your PDFs on your own computer or in a cloud service available to you.

Which one should I choose?

In your choice of reference manager, you need to consider the practical functions of the program, your options regarding access, and if it is necessary for you to use the same program as your collaborators. The academic writing process can be tricky and difficult to navigate, but with a reference manager it will be somewhat easier.

Want to know more?

As a student or employee at LiU, you can find out more about how to get access and use EndNote and Zotero at Liunet Student and Liunet Employees (sign in with LiU ID required)

By: Niklas Ferdinand Carlsson, librarian, Campus Norrköping Library

Translated by: Peter Igelström

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New library e-books

**Detta blogginlägg finns även på svenska**

Linköping University Library purchase and subscribe to e-books from various publishers. All library e-books can be searched in the search service UniSearch. The great majority of them are in English and if a book is required reading at a course at LiU, the Library will acquire an e-book version whenever possible.

If you wish us to buy a book that is not part of the library collection, you are welcome to submit a purchase suggestion via the Request book form at Interlibrary loans and purchase suggestions.

If you have any questions about e-books or other library media, get in touch with us via email biblioteket@liu.se, or our live chat at the Library web.

Some examples of newly acquired e-books:

By: Maria Svenningsson, Valla Library

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News about library publishing agreements

**Detta blogginlägg på svenska**

Linköping University Library has agreements with publishers that give LiU authors a discount on publishing charges when publishing in a number of Open Access journals. For 2022, the Library has signed three new publishing agreements. There have also been modifications in some existing agreements.

The new agreements are with Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), Nature journals, and, from the 1st of February, Public Library of Science (PLoS).

The existing agreements with Taylor & Francis and Oxford University Press have been expanded to include pure Open Access journals (previously, these agreements covered only hybrid journals). The agreements with American institute of Physics (AIP) and Springer now include bigger publishing catalogues than previously. The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) agreement now also includes the pure OA journal RSC Advances.

Collected information about existing agreements is available at Library publishing agreements.

Person som läser en elektronisk tidskrift

Publishing agreements usually cover a selection of journals from each publisher. Use the search service SciFree to search specific journals to see if they are covered by an agreement. The SciFree search box can be found at the page linked above.

Some agreements cover the whole article processing charge (APC), others give authors a discount. In the latter case, the corresponding author pays the remaining amount.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about library publishing agreements. The Library’s Open Access team can be reached at: biblioteket@liu.se.

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Use the extended opening hours Meröppet to spread out the visits to the library.

What do Norrköping students think of Meröppet, the extended opening hours?

**This post is also available in Swedish**

Wednesday 8 December at 9.30 pm

We visit Campus Norrköping library to see how the new, extended openings hours called Meröppet in Swedish are working out. Meröppet was introduced on November 8th without much ado and now about a month later we want to find out what students, and possibly LiU employees think.

Visiting figures show that about 1100 persons have visited the library in the course of the extended, un-staffed openings hours during evening time. About 130 persons  have been early risers and visited the library between 7 and 8 in the morning, before regular hours.

On this late Wednesday evening, we first meet John and Isak who are just about to leave for the night. John has spent the whole day, since 9 am, in the library and he is a big fan of Meröppet which makes it possible to stay on and study and also to arrange meetings with his fellow students in the environmental science programme. Both John and Isak mean the library is a natural center for their course as they use  a lot of literature. Right now they are preparing for examinations. två studenter

-It’s a lot more comfortable to sit here among the books in a quiet, peaceful atmosphere than to book a impersonal, anonymous group study room in Kopparhammaren. This library is very good for studying and it is nice with the different areas where we can sit.

How did you find out about Meröppet?

–We saw a poster and then asked library staff who explained. The first evening we were here the security guard was also very helpful and friendly and explained how it all worked.

Up stairs  in the library, at one of the individual study tables, we find Teodor who is studying construction engineering.

-I got a tip from the library staff about Meröppet and found more information on the web site . Since than I have been here several times during the last two weeks and stayed about two hours each time to prepare for an exam.

Wednesday 15 December at 7.45 pm

One week later, during the week long charity event Musikhjälpen, we visit again to find that all the activities around Musikhjälpen not necessarily competes with the chance to put in some extra hours on one’s course work. Some ten students are still here and we get to chat with four cheerful “decentralized med school students”, as they present themselves, who all live in Norrköping.

–To sit here is the best, says Mattias Saliba and John Youssef, Gihan Lafta and Ali Mohsen instantly agree. Nice to be able to stay on late, before we had to move to other places in Kåkenhus, which are OK  but not as study friendly. Here you can sit among books and that creates a good atmosphere which spreads tranquility. 

How did you find out about Meröppet?

-We read a news letter from the medical faculty and since then we have been here many times. 

Close by sits Vivi Malki, who studies industrial engineering and management on Campus Valla, Linköping, but lives in Norrköping.

–I was told by friends who study here in Norrköping that you have long opening hours and that it is so nice and peaceful to work here. Now I have been here every night the passed weeks, she says.

In the arm chairs by the terrace exit we find Noreen Hassan and Kelly Usabimana, students of nursing and foundation year in science respectively.

-We saw the posters, and now we have been here several times to study for our January exams. It is very useful to be able to do it this way.

On these two visits we did not identify anyone we recognize as staff or faculty but Meröppet is open for anyone with a LiU card who wants to pick up literature, study or print articles and pieces of work.

Meröppet has also been introduced at the Medical library, Campus US, Linköping.

Read more about the arrangements here.

Written by Britt Omstedt, librarian  Campus Norrköping library