It has become all the more important to be able to find, evaluate, and use relevant and trustworthy information in today's society. Because of that, it is a good idea to keep practising these skills all throughout your studies. By being aware of the different aspects of the information search process, you will be able to adapt your search to be more efficient and maintain a critical approach. This is also something that will be helpful to you throughout your studies, and later in your working life.

After deciding on a searchable research question, it is time to choose the search terms, and/or subject headings, that are relevant for your problem. Do not forget that you have to search in English to get the best results. There are dictionaries that you can access through the library's website.

Then, decide which search engine or database to use. These are the ones we have discussed in this course:

Onesearch: The university library's search engine that searches through most of the library's books, e-books, databases, academic journals, etc. at the same time. The search window can be found at the library's homepage at kau.se/en/library
Google Scholar: Google's search engine for academic material. Here you can find articles, books, dissertations, and essays. Don't forget that you need to evaluate the material you find here since not everything you find is scholarly. You can add Karlstad University Library to your library links in order to get links to the full text on the material we have access to.
Libris: The Swedish national library catalogue containing almost all the books that are available through Swedish libraries.

Combine your search terms in different ways until you have enough relevant material to start looking through. You can, for example, use the search techniques truncation or phrase search.

The next module will be about different publishing types and how to evaluate the material you have found.

No title by @impatrickt, CC0