Animal Care and Veterinary Nursing: Finding Information and Research

Planning

Before you start, plan your search.  Think about the search strategies and techniques you can use, what type of resources you need (books, journal articles) and where to find them.

Search strategies and techniques

Keywords

These words give you the key to information. Use keywords rather than sentences when searching library databases.

 e.g. animal care Zealand

Not: Discuss animal care in a New Zealand context

Always brainstorm keywords before you start searching. To get some ideas:

• Look at your assignment question and cherry-pick the main terms
• Read the abstracts of books and articles and note the terminology authors are using
• Look at the subject headings in the library records of these resources for terms you could search with

Think of the three Ws to help you get the information you need:

• Who are you researching e.g., cat, dog, equine?
• What are you researching e.g., pain management, wound care?
• Where are you researching e.g., veterinary clinic, farm, New Zealand, Australasia?

The first search is not always your best search

Be prepared to modify your search and use different keywords or combinations of keywords until you are happy with the results. Start with broad terms or concepts, e.g. Disease and then if necessary, refine your search using more specific terms e.g. influenza.

Phrase searching

Use quotation marks to treat words as a phrase e.g., “animal care” 

Synonyms

Think about words or phrases that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase e.g., cat OR feline

If your results are:

• Not relevant - Use synonyms, broader or narrower terms, add more words, try different combinations of synonyms
• Too few - Check your spelling, try truncation, synonyms, or a broader term
• Too many - Add more words, use a narrower term, synonyms, use the filters (Scholarly & peer-review, content type, subject, date) 

Truncation

If a word has several possible endings, use a truncation symbol (usually an asterisk) so the computer searches on all the words at once. For example, use reflect* to search for: Reflect, reflects, reflecting, reflective

Wild card 

If you want to include several possible spellings of a word, then use the wild card symbol (use a question mark to replaces 0 or 1 letter, an asterisk for more than 1 letter) so the computer searches on all versions of the word at once. e.g. Immuni?ation for searching both immunisation and immunization 

Boolean operators

These focus your search and are great to use in the Advanced search of databases (NB Use capital letters for these words). 

• AND - When you want to include all terms. Each hit should contain both words e.g. pain AND manag* (This narrows the search)
• OR - Each hit will contain one or the other term. They may or may not appear in the same record.  This is where you can include synonyms (alternative words for the same thing) e.g. care OR welfare (This broadens the search)
• NOT - This excludes a word e.g. human (This narrows the search)

Publication date

Library databases give you the option to select a specific publication date range.

What type of resources?

The type of resources you should be using are academic books, ebooks and scholarly/peer-reviewed journal articles. You could also refer to professional/industry journals, conference papers and proceedings.

Use of websites

Depending on your assignment question, you can use relevant information found on governmental, organisational and tertiary websites such as the Ministry of Health, (See web resources) and open access repositories of institutions. e.g. reports, policies, evidence-based nursing procedures and theses. 

What is scholarly?

Scholarly articles are written by experts or researchers in a particular field.  They are aimed at other experts or researchers (including students) in their field. They are usually in depth research, original research or case studies. They use technical language, contain no advertising or non-essential images (only those that support their research i.e. graphs, charts, statistics etc). They have different sections including an abstract, introduction, literature review, methodology, results and conclusion. They have formal and lengthy references and are usually peer-reviewed.

What is peer-reviewed?

Peer-reviewed or 'refereed is when scholarly work is evaluated by other experts in the field before it is accepted and published in a scholarly journal. This ensures that the required standard of expertise is met.

Where do you find information?

Many courses have required textbooks or recommended reading lists. Look at the Books/eBooks and Databases tabs of this guide for titles in your subject area. Look at the reference list and bibliographies of books and articles to see what the authors are using in their research.

The Library search field on the Library website enables you to search the Library’s collection. There is a drop down menu with a list of filters:

• Select Library Catalogue filter for finding physical books
• Select Search Everything filter to search the Library’s print and online items at the same time.

Databases and eBooks links under the Library Links tab enable you to search specific databases on a topic. Use the Advanced search of different databases to refine your search and apply the searching techniques mentioned in this guide (see above).

Evaluate what you read

It is important to evaluate information especially if its found on the internet.  Apply this check list to make sure the information is suitable for academic purposes:

Currency. Timeliness. When was it published?

Relevancy. Usefulness. Does it relate to your topic?

Authority. Source. Who wrote it? What are their qualifications? If using a website, how reliable is it? Look at the domain name (URL). Government: .govt, .gov, .mil; Educational: .edu, .ac, .school; Non-commercial: .org; Commercial: .net, .co, .com

Accuracy. Truthfulness. Where does the information come from? Is it peer-reviewed? Supported by evidence?

Purpose. Why does the information exist? Is it trying to inform, sell, teach, entertain, persuade? Is it objective or biased?

Blakeslee, S. (2004). The CRAAP test. LOEX Quarterly, 31(3), 6-7. https://library.csuchico.edu/sites/default/files/craap-test.pdf

Skim reading

Look at the author, title, and date to see if the item is suitable for your research. With scholarly journal articles, read the abstract, introduction, method, results, conclusion and reference list to get a sense of the content. Take note of the language used, is it readable or too difficult to understand? Is it academic or casual?

Use control F or Apple F when in a PDF or html document to locate a keyword quickly within the document (This may not work on scanned documents).

Evaluate what you write

Have you met the assignment requirements and created a thorough answer? Have you found relevant articles? Do you need to search further?

APA referencing

Make sure you keep a record of all items you quote or paraphrase from and that you have all the elements required for referencing.  See the APA Referencing Guide for help (located under the Library Links tab at the top of the Library website). 

In many databases you can save items to a folder, format it into a citation style of your choosing and email the item to yourself.  Note: Machine generated references are not always correct so check them against the library guide.

Māori Research

• Kaupapa Māori Research. A webpage describing research that is done by Māori within a Kaupapa Māori Research paradigm
• Pātaka Raraunga brings together data, tools, and reports on Te Āo Māori
• Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga (NPM) is New Zealand's Māori Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) funded by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) and hosted by The University of Auckland
• Kaupapa Māori as Transformative Indigenous Analysis  Sharing Kaupapa Māori resources and articles
• Rauru Whakarare Evaluation Framework provides a Kaupapa Māori-informed approach to evaluation

The hardcopy versions of Whitireia/ WelTec Masters of Professional Practice theses and Praxis Projects are held at the Porirua Campus Library. They are not for loan. Many are available online. An alphabetical index of these are located in the Whitireia and WelTec Theses Collection.

New Zealand Research on DigitalNZ. This is the new home for theses and research papers migrated from NZ research.org. Here, you will discover and access New Zealand's most comprehensive selection of research papers and related resources. This site include peer-reviewed and other research from universities, polytechnics, and research organisations throughout New Zealand.

Open Access Research in New Zealand

• Auckland University Research Space
• AUT Tuwhera Open Access
• Lincoln University Research@Lincoln
• Massey University Research Online
• Otago University Research Archive
• University of Canterbury Research Repository
• University of Waikato Research Commons
• Victoria University of Wellington Open Access

International Theses

• EBSCO Open Dissertations 
• ETHOS - Electronic Theses Online Service
• ProQuest - Dissertations & Theses
• Theses Canada
• Trove

Britannica Academic. Britannica has articles, photographs, illustrations, sound files and videos on a wide variety of subjects. It also provides access to the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus. - go to the Britannica homepage and scroll to the middle of the page.

 

Oxford English Dictionaries online

New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (click drop down arrow)

Guide to accessing Oxford English Dictionaries

 

Te Aka Māori Dictionary  

 

Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. A comprehensive guide to our peoples, natural environment, history, culture, economy and society.