The IOU Libraries provide a gateway to all kind of knowledge and academic resources. There are different options for researcher and students to locate, evaluate and to learn about the research skills, assignment and other academic purpose. The IOU libraries website provide different kind of database, academic journals, Articles, access to IOU library Management System, IOU Institution Repository System and google Scholars to do academic research using the library and its resources.

The Library website provide access to E books, E Journals and different kind of other research database recommended by your lecturers. IOU Libraries is a great place to provide conducive learning averments to build on what you have understood in class. You can find books, eBooks, journals, articles on Library searching bar sections of our resources all in one go. Academic journal articles are an essential source of current research, literature reviews and book reviews. Peer-reviewed articles are checked for accuracy, purpose and clarity by a panel of experts, meaning you are reading good quality information.

There is different type of search engines but the most popular is google scholars. In google search engine you can find publicly

available information easily for your research work as well as assignment. You can use different type of searching techniques for your research while using the advance options of google scholars.

Searching Techniques

This is very important to find your desired information within time and getting good search results. For the computerized resources, databases and system you need to know how to find the resources and to certain basic search techniques. These techniques will improve your searching skills and results in information services and when searching the world of internet.

Different database provides different types searching methods and offer additional ways to search for the better results. There are different types of searching techniques for searching the all kind of database. The IOU libraries will provide a comprehensive training about the different types of searching techniques while searching in research engine or library database. The library will organize different workshop and training. Following is some searching techniques which are mostly using for all kind of databases and search engines:

Subject headings

The subject heading is very common search methods which are being used for all kind of databases. Every publication has assigned a subject heading which further make possible to search for any kind of topic in database.

Phrase searching

Phrase searching allows users to search for articles containing a phrase rather than containing a set of keywords in random order. For most databases the phrase needs to place in double quotation marks; e.g. “International Online University”. This is particularly useful if the words on their own are common.

Truncation

Truncation is a technique that broadens your search to include various word endings. To use truncation, enter the root of the word with the truncation symbol at the end.

E.g. genetic* finds child, childish or childishly

Wildcards

A wildcard character can be used to substitute for any other character or characters in a string. This is useful if a word is spelled in different ways but has the same meaning, e.g. American/British spell variants.

Proximity Operators

Proximity operators are sometimes called adjacency operators. They function as precision-maximizers as they enable you to define how closely you want your search terms to be found in relation to one another.

Upcoming Online Training Sessions on Searching Techniques