Literature searching can be seen as a cyclical process evolving and developing as your research starts to take shape. Bibliographic databases will aid you in the searching process and are highly effective tools for searching for relevant material. They enable you to construct sophisticated search queries by utilising specialist functions and combining search sets to locate high quality journal articles, conference papers and proceedings from a wide range of sources. The Plan section of this Guide details databases relevant to Education and related disciplines and includes information to assist you in selecting the most appropriate database for your search.
Plan ~ Search ~ Evaluate ~ Manage ~ Keep current ~ Refine
| Plan | prepare your search. Think carefully about the key terms and phrases to use in your search. Use the Search Preparation Form to help develop and map out your ideas. Select the most relevant database(s) to use. |
| Search | search the databases by combining sets of keywords & phrases. Identify new terms to incorporate into your searches. |
| Evaluate | databases index high quality sources enabling you to focus on ensuring that your results meet your research requirements. |
| Manage | organise and store your references for easy retrieval/updating. |
| Keep current | keep up with the latest developments in your area by using book and journal alerts and social media. |
| Refine | assess results and reframe your search enquiry as your research progresses. Start the cycle again! |
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What is a database? |
Why use a database? |
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A bibliographic database contains collections of published, peer-reviewed material arranged in a structured and consistent way. Entries are 
analysed when entered into databases to identify key subjects and descriptors with keyword terms assigned to them using controlled vocabulary terms, creating an index that the database will search to retrieve material matching your search fields. This also enables searches to be limited to fields such as publication, year, etc.
Searches undertaken in bibliographic databases are therefore more precise and comprehensive than searches on general search engines such as Google, Google Scholar or iDiscover and the results are of a consistently higher quality and reliability.
Google, Google Scholar and iDiscover provide a simpler and broader way to search, as they search across many disciplines and a variety of sources. They rank a document according to where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.
If you were to use only Google, Google Scholar or iDiscover, some significant articles would not be retrieved due to sorting, vocabulary, and subscription limitations that may be in place, where material can only be searched for within a subscription database.
When are Google, Google Scholar or iDiscover suitable to use?
Google Scholar can sometimes help to find the full text for grey literature, and occasionally will retrieve useful information not found in a database search. Google, Google Scholar or iDiscover are adequate if you only require a small number of articles on a particular subject, however, they are not the most efficient or effective tools for searching the literature due to the way they are constructed as explained above. In addition, there are a number of other drawbacks to searching these resources: