Searching for Refereed Conference Papers or Conference Proceedings

I was having a fair amount of trouble trying to find a refereed conference paper for my assignment  using Find it. I was searching for Assistive Technologies and clicking on the scholary selection in the top menu box on the LHS of the screen. When I would do this the conference page would disappear from the screen leaving me with only to be able to search for some of the items on the list. I knew there must be something else I had to do so I left it and when I was next at uni I went and saw Pim at the help desk in the library and once again she was so willing to lend a hand. The beauty of having the Library staff help you is that they have their computer set up so you, the student sit opposite them at the help desk but you have a screen in front of you to allow you to follow everything that they are doing on the main screen. This is a fantastic tool as it is really authentic in your learning.

So we set about finding out what I had to do and Pim suggested that my search Assistive Technologies needed to be refined. She told me to truncate it, which means that you place an *(asterick) after a certain part of a word and it will widen your search to include any ending to that part of a word. Pim chose to put in Assistive Technolog* and then we asked for a scholary search and voila there was the conference paper on the menu with a number beside it. So the search was on any words that link to Assistive Technolog - so this could be technologies, technology etc.

Truncating is a good thing to rememeber for further searching I do.

 It had disappeared before, because the search I was doing did not come up with a match so it eliminates all types without a match.

I feel I have learnt a lot about the Findit facility and all the ins and outs that go with it through trial and error. I had a laugh with Pim and said that I may get the hang of it by the end of my degree and her reply with a chuckle was that’s good but guess what they will probably change it all on you too!