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Search Tips

Here are a few tips to help you search more effectively, choose trustworthy information and avoid fake stories - and they apply whether you are looking for information for an assignment, personal research or booking a holiday.

What is referencing

During your course you will be asked to find information from various sources for essays and assignments. These will influence your thinking and you need to acknowledge the authors or creators who produced them. Referencing is the way you let others know which sources you have consulted as part of your work.

Why reference?

You must give proper acknowledgement to the creators of any sources that you have looked at as part of your work. It shows the reader the breadth of your research.

The reader may want to learn more from the source and will be able to trace it.

You will avoid any claims of copying or plagiarism. You may lose marks if you have not referenced your sources correctly.

Plagiarism:
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Plagiarism is using the work or ideas of someone else and presenting them as your own. This may be copying and pasting text or illustrations from print sources or the Internet without acknowledging where it came from, not using quotation marks around quotations or quoting or paraphrasing another’s work without mentioning the original source. Changing the odd word or two in a sentence is also viewed as plagiarism. Plagiarism is seen as a form of cheating and the college will penalise anyone who is found to have committed it.

The way to avoid plagiarism is to properly credit original sources using references and bibliographies.

How to reference?

A reference system is a set of rules for recording the details of a source. There are several systems and the one used most widely in the college is the Harvard system. Please check which system to use with your lecturer.

Where to reference?

There are two places where you need to reference any sources you have used.

The first is when you mention a source in your text. This is also known as a citation and consists of the surname of the creator of the work and the date of publication, these are placed in brackets.

The second place is your reference list/bibliography at the end of your work. This gives more details about the source including title and publisher.

In-text references?

If you mention the author as part of the sentence you only need to put the date in brackets … according to Christie (2019). If the author is not mentioned then both the author and date appear in brackets e.g. (Christie, 2019).

‍Quotation
‍This is when you use the exact words from a work. The words quoted should have quotation marks at the beginning and end. These can be single ‘ or double ” please check which form your lecturer requires. You need to identify the author, the year it was published and the page number(s) where it can be found.

‍Paraphrasing
‍This is using your own words to describe what someone else has written. When paraphrasing you must be careful not to change the meaning of the original work. You need to identify the author, year of publication and page number(s) of the work you are paraphrasing.

‍Summarising
‍This is taking the main points of a work and giving a brief description of them. You must give details of the source you are summarising in your work and mention the author and publication date.

What do I need to list?

The details required depend on the type of source you are referencing. Key elements will always include the author or creator, the title, and the date it was published. You need to add more details for each different type of source.

Reference List and Bibliography

A Reference List is a list of all the resources you have mentioned and is placed at the end of your work. They should be listed in alphabetical order by their authors or creators. Where a work has no author then the title is used.

A Bibliography is a list of the resources mentioned in your work and any other resources you have consulted as part of your research. It is compiled in the same way as a reference list. The bibliography should appear at the end of your work.

To make it easier it may be useful to keep a note of the references you have used as you go along either in a separate document or at the end of your main document.

Click on the link below for guidance on compiling or sorting your reference list/bibliography

link for sortinfo how to guide

Books

Details required are:

AUTHOR'S SURNAME, First Initial(s)., Publication year. Book title (in italics). Edition (if not first). Place of publication: Publisher.

Details of how to reference books with more than one author, editors or works with chapters by different authors are available in our downloadable reference guide.

E-books

Details required:

AUTHOR'S SURNAME, First Initial(s)., Publication year. Book title. [online]. Place of publication: Publisher. Available from: URL [Accessed date].

Journals

References to journal articles should include the title of the article and the details of the journal it appears in

Author's surname, initial(s)., Year of publication. Title of article. Title of Journal (in italics), Volume number and (part number) Month (if available), page numbers of article.

E-Journals

These references should include all the details listed for journals and the details of the online resource and the date it was read.

AUTHOR'S SURNAME, First Initial(s)., Publication year. Article Title. Journal Title. [online]. Available from: URL [Accessed date].

Webpages

AUTHOR'S SURNAME, First Initial(s)., Publication year. Page title. [online]. Place of publication: Publisher. Available from: URL [Accessed date].

If there is no author, reference by webpage name:

WEBPAGE NAME, Publication year. Page title. [online]. Place of publication: Publisher. Available from: URL [Accessed date].

Full Referencing Guide

Examples of how to reference other sources including; Wikis, Blogs, Government Publications, TV and DVD, Tables and Graphs are included in the full referencing guide below.

View a downloadable, printable version of the full Referencing guide.

Keywords

A keyword is a word or term that gives the meaning of a topic and can be used as search terms in an online search.

Before starting to research a topic, it is worth taking time to think about the main points of the topic and what it is you want to find out. Pick out the key words or phrases and these will form your keywords.

How to narrow or widen a search:

The use of AND, OR and NOT with your keywords will limit or expand your search. This is called Boolean logic and the terms are known as Boolean operators.

.AND narrows a search as it only returns results that have both those keywords for example, autumn AND fruit and will ignore any that mentions only one of them

.OR widens a search as it will return results that have one or the other of the keywords or both. For example, rabbit OR hare will return results that mention rabbit but not hare, hare but not rabbit, and those that include both hare and rabbit

.NOT is another way of narrowing a search as it will ignore the keyword that follows ‘not’. For example, a search for social media NOT twitter will produce results that include the keyword social media but not the keyword twitter.

Useful Symbols

Inverted commas (“ “) around a phrase will produce results with the words appearing together in that form.

For example, a search for: “zebra crossing” will produce pages that include the phrase zebra crossing and will not include pages that only contain one of the words in the phrase.

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‍Truncation symbol (*)
‍If you use the truncation or asterisk symbol after the stem (first part) of a word, the search will look for words that start with the same set of letters.

For example, a search for: child* will produce pages that include the keywords childcare, childhood, children and children’s.‍

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‍Wildcards
‍Putting a symbol in a word instead of a letter in a search will bring up different spellings of a word.

For example, colo?r will find colour and color; wom!n will find woman and women.

Choosing the right information

Once you have your search results you then need to evaluate them, so you select the most relevant and reliable sources.

There are 5 criteria you need to consider, known as the 'CRAAP test':

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‍Currency: The timeliness of the information

• When was the information published or posted?

• Has it been revised or updated?

• Do you need current information, or will older sources work as well?

• Are the links working?

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‍Relevance: The importance of the information for your needs

• Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question?

• Who was it written for, e.g. the general public, students or people in the industry?

• Is the information at the right level, i.e.., not too simple or advanced for your needs?

• Does this add anything to the information you have from other sources?

• Are they an expert on the subject?

• Is there contact information, such as a publisher or email address?

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‍Authority: The source of the information

• Who is the author/creator/ publisher and/or source?

• Are the author's credentials or organisational affiliations given?

• What are the author's qualifications to write on the topic?

• Is there contact information, such as a publisher or e-mail address?

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‍Accuracy: The reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content

• Where does the information come from?

• Is there a reference list of sources and evidence?

• Can you verify any of the information in another source or from personal knowledge?

• Does the language or tone seem unbiased and free of emotion?

• Are there spelling, grammar or typographical errors?

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‍Purpose: The reason the information exists

• Is the intention of the information to entertain, inform, educate or perhaps sell an idea or product?

• Do the authors/sponsors make their intentions or purpose clear?

• Is the information fact, opinion or propaganda?

• Are there political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional or personal biases?

Domain Names

A domain name is the name of a website and it consists of letters and numbers which allows the site to be found on the internet. Parts of the address help to identify the type of organisation behind the website.

In Britain the most common are:

‍.ac.uk - an educational institution like a college or university

‍.co.uk or .com - a business or commercial organisation (.com is usually a company from the USA)

‍.gov.uk - a UK government department

‍.gov.scot - Scottish government

‍.org.uk - non-profit organisations

‍.me.uk - personal websites, e.g. blogs