Engineering 

When you get an assignment, the first thing you need to do is ANALYSE THE TOPIC.

This means reading the question carefully and identifying the key concepts.

For example, the question "What would be the ecological impact of building a theme park in the Hunter Estuary Wetlands?" produces the concepts:

ECOLOGICAL IMPACT

THEME PARK

WETLANDS

The next stage is to produce synonyms for your search terms, e.g.

ECOLOGICAL IMPACT or ECOLOGY or WILDLIFE

THEME PARK or TOURIST ATTRACTION

WETLANDS or RIVER BASIN

Exercise

Identify the keywords, suggest synonyms and construct a search strategy for the topic "What are the implications for the rail system of a new shopping centre in Glebe?".

You might find the Research Plan a useful tool for this exercise.

The library website provides access to a vast range of journal articles via DATABASES.

These articles are the best source of scholarly information because they are:

• High quality
• Up-to-date
• Fully searchable
• Accessible at all times and from off-campus
• Not accessible via a simple Google search

Some key databases include:

• Compendex
• ScienceDirect
• Web of Science
• Australian Standards Online

You can see a full list of thedatabases available to you on the library website.

Exercise

1) Open Compendex
2) Using your search strategy from the previous exercise, perform a search.
3) Look at your results list. Are they relevant? How many are there? How many are in full text?

The simplest way to find books is by performing a keyword search on the library catalogue.

If you want to use a more complex search using synonyms etc, try playing with the catalogue's Advanced Search.

Note that the drop-box that defaults to "entire collection" can be changed to "e-books". E-books can be accessed online from any computer, just like the journal articles in the databases.

You can also access the items for your Unit of Study by performing a Reserve search (More detail here).

If you have any problems finding a book in the library after you have found it on the catalogue, this interactive video might be useful.

Exercises

1) Conduct a keyword search for "environmental impact assessment" on the library catalogue. How many results do you get? How relevant are they? What words could you add to your search to make it more useful?

2) Try an advanced search on the same keywords but select "SciTech" from the "Location" dropdown menu. What difference does this make?

3) Conduct a keyword search for "environmental impact assessment" on the library catalogue but select "e-books" instead of "entire collection" from the dropdown menu. Click on the most interesting result and discover how e-books work.

There is obviously a huge amount of information available on the internet, but it needs to be used carefully. A typical Google search will produce a mix of information from businesses, governments, campaign groups, individual bloggers and other organisations. It will not produce scholarly information of the kind produced by a search of the databases or the library catalogue.

One way of improving your experience on Google is by using the options on Google Advanced Search to limit your results.

You could also try using Google Scholar, a Google application that searches for academic material.

A very useful site is the Australian Bureau of Statistics, on which you can find official government figures on a wide range of subjects such as demographics, transport, industry and agriculture.

You should be particularly careful of using Wikipedia articles in your assignments. Wikipedia is unreliable because there is no formal editing process and you cannot be sure who wrote the articles. As a rule, never use a Wikipedia article as a reference in your assignment, but you might find some interesting further reading.

Exercise

Conduct a Google search on "mining safety" and look at the first 10 results. What kind of pages have you found?

Conduct a Google Scholar search on "mining safety" and look at the first 10 results. What kind of pages have you found?

Referencing or citing is a formal way of acknowledging sources of information and ideas you have used in your essay or assignment. It identifies the sources so they may be verified.  One of the most commonly used referencing styles is the Harvard style. For detailed information about this style including comprehensive examples have a look at http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/cite/harvard_dis/ 

Essays, theses and assignments need to formally recognise the sources from which you have obtained information. Presenting another person's work as your own by copying it without due acknowledgement is plagiarism. Have a look at this short interactive tutorial on what is plagiarism and how to avoid it.
Plagiarism & academic honesty