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Why do I need to acquire information?
The first and most important reason for acquiring information related to the thesis is the fact that your thesis must demonstrate that you master a required amount of field-specific information and key concepts. Many books with which you are acquainted during the thesis process will not be included in the final list of references of your thesis, and you will also not refer to them in the text. However, they will serve you when you familiarise yourself with the topic of the thesis. In a thesis or a major exercise, you must also be able to combine theory and practice. You will not obtain this skill without practice. On the other hand, you should not spend your time reinventing the wheel; instead, use the information on existing good solutions as a justification of the solutions you present in your thesis. Good scientific practice obliges an author to indicate quotations of and references to someone else’s publication, be it an email message, a scientific book or an article. Thus, you cannot use someone else’s text or speech as part of your thesis without indicating the original author or source in both your text and the list of references. The original publication can then be found there and the accuracy of the text verified.
What kind of sources can I use in a thesis or an exercise?
The purpose of a thesis prepared at a university of applied sciences is defined in Decree 352/2003 as follows:
The aim of the thesis is to develop and demonstrate the student’s ability to apply his or her professional knowledge and skills in a practical professional task.
According to the decree, we are dealing with a practical professional task related to the professional studies here; hence, the student must also find the suitable sources for his or her thesis: professional books and magazines (articles) and websites, as well as scientific books, articles (in so-called scholarly journals), conference presentations and websites. General books and articles should be excluded from the actual list of references; this also applies to Wikipedia. Nevertheless, you can use them when you familiarise yourself with the topic of the thesis or exercise. The client’s intranet or corresponding files, theses prepared earlier for the enterprise or corporation and internal reports of the enterprise may also be necessary sources in a thesis, but they can also be material with which you are acquainted during the thesis process and which you do not necessarily refer to in the thesis.
When retrieving information and writing, you should remember a critical approach to sources: can this information be verified elsewhere, where does this information originate from, how old is this information and who originally published this information and why? Information becomes outdated at different paces in different fields. In information technology, it can be dated in only a year, whereas in some fields, information dating back 10 or 15 years is still relevant.
Changes in legislation or standards may also contribute to the dating of information. Be aware of how quickly information becomes dated in your field, and apply this as a rule to your text.
Getting familiar with the topic
It is advisable to start information retrieval by getting familiar with the topic through course books and trade journals. This will provide you with a basic picture of the content of the thesis and the terminology to be used. You will find these professional basic works most easily in the library of your educational institution. For example, at Satakunta University of Applied Sciences you should first check the Tyrni database. However, do remember that if you search with a very precise single word, you will not necessarily find what you are looking for. This is due to the fact that the Tyrni data mainly comprises the title of the book and two or more words describing the content of the book. These words are subject headings that describe the content and topics of the book IN GENERAL TERMS. Therefore, you should consider the topic on which you are seeking information, and search with a word that describes that topic. For example, if you are seeking information on outdoor lighting, it is likely that you will not find anything with this precise expression, but if you search with the word “lighting”, you will find books that also deal with outdoor lighting. So you will find the shelf category in which topic-related books are placed. When you go to that shelf and browse books, you may find several good books which will guide you further in becoming familiar with the topic.
Trade journals of your field also constitute a good basis for getting acquainted with the topic. Go and check what trade journals of your field are available in your campus library. For example, journals related to economics could be Bloomberg Businessweek, The Finnish Economic Journal and The Finnish Journal of Business Economics. Trade journals may also help you to find a topic for your thesis: they deal with topics that are currently actively discussed in working life. E-magazines may also be useful; determine what is available using the field-specific links on the library’s website.
At this stage of getting familiar with the topic, you can also ask your campus library for assistance. The library staff can guide you to the right shelf, where material related to your topic is placed. In addition, they can give you good advice on other possible sources, such as electronic databases and guides on writing a thesis.
Mind map or list of terms
When you spend time on getting familiar with the topic, it is advisable to prepare a mind map or a list of terms on the topic of your thesis. When you prepare such a list, you will notice that you are also working on the definition of the topic, thinking about the concepts to be defined and their meanings and observing various things related to the topic. In other words, you are mapping out the topic, which is an important task. A mind map or a list of terms is incredibly useful in information retrieval. Although information retrieval is often conducted with one or two words, these words and the relations between them are easier to understand and the definitions to be made during information retrieval have already been thought out. If you cannot find the information with the first few words, the mind map or list of terms will provide you with further words you can use in information retrieval.
Remember that the MOT Dictionary Service on the library’s website can also be used with remote access. With this service, you will easily find equivalents and synonyms in different languages for the terms in your mind map. The MOT Dictionary Service also includes specialised dictionaries of various fields.
Instructions on preparing a mind map
Many of you probably already know how to prepare a mind map. However, sometimes it is difficult to get started. Nowadays, information technology offers various tools that can help in preparing a mind map. For example, check the Mind Mapping Site at www.mind-mapping.co.uk/make-mind-map.htm, or browse this book available in our library: Buzan, T. & Buzan, B. 2010. The mind map book: unlock your creativity, boost your memory, change your life. New York: Pearson BBC Active. As regards software, it could be worth trying the free trial version of MindView. You can also prepare mind maps with Word and Excel.
And then it is time to retrieve information…
… but let’s not hurry yet. Let’s think for a moment about how information retrieval starts. If you are going to start with the database of your library, as recommended above, remember that you should pay attention to the inflection of the words. For example, when making searches in Tyrni (SAMK’s library database), use truncation or the wildcard symbol when using a word to search. This means that all the inflections will be included in the search from the start. Normally Tyrni will search the keyword in exactly the form that you write in the search box: if you write “economics”, the result will comprise books and journals with the word “economics” but none of the inflections or translations in other languages. In English the inflection of the words does not play such a significant role as in Finnish, but do consider the difference between singular and plural forms and some exceptions in the inflection (e.g. man/ men, woman/women) when retrieving information. A single character can also be replaced with a wildcard symbol, which usually is *, % or $, depending on the database. Check the wildcard symbol in the Help menu of the database when you are about to start information retrieval.
As regards Tyrni, remember that the search will actually focus on the title of the book, the name of the author and the few subject headings determined by the library. Therefore, carefully consider the words you use when retrieving information, so that you will actually find the information you need. It is not advisable to use very precise keywords that describe small details.
Boolean operators are words used to connect keywords (AND, OR, NOT / JA, TAI, EI). Two or more keywords can be connected using the most frequent Boolean operator AND, which implies that all the keywords will have to appear in the search results. Please note that, even in this case, the keywords do not need to be close to each other; one may appear in the heading and the other may be the last word of the article. You can use OR between two words that, for example, are synonymous, and NOT when you want to exclude search results including certain words. See further instructions in the University of Auckland's video on the Boolean operators at YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tm-sDKCnO4).
Another important tool for information retrieval is phrase search. It means using more than one word when searching for information on a given subject matter. For example, information on knowledge management should be searched using quotation marks: “knowledge management”. The search results will then include the keywords next to each other. The best search results can be achieved with the phrase search in many other contexts as well. It also works in Google, for example when searching for a name. You can test the phrase search in Google using your own name: search for your name with or without quotation marks. What kind of impact did the quotation marks have on the number of search results and the precision of your search?
Tyrni
We then finally get to the actual information retrieval. As mentioned above, it should be started in the library’s database. This way, you will find out about some Finnish basic works in the field. Try more than one keyword, so you will get an idea of the volume of available material from the start.
It is not always good to achieve a large number of search results. For example, if you obtain 376 search results, it is far too much: no-one can browse such a long list entirely. Aim at achieving 30–50 search results (in the library’s databases), which is something you can still manage. If you obtain a lot of search results, place AND between the keywords, refine your search e.g. to the last ten years, search your campus library only, use phrase search if possible, or refine your keywords.
From the start, remember to save the search results as a file. You can send your search results from Tyrni by email or save them in your personal information in the Tyrni database.
When you search for information in several places, as the case usually is for those preparing a thesis, it is advisable to use some system for managing reference information. In the simplest form, you can create a single file where you save all the essential information on books, articles, websites etc., be they in electronic or printed form. The file allows you to access the information easily when necessary and to borrow the books from the library or seek them on the internet. Various software is also available to manage references. In Word (from MS Word 2007 onward) it is possible to do the referencing and create the list of references directly in the document. Other options include the Zotero extension for the Firefox browser, and of course the RefWorks reference management program available through the library’s website. Through RefWorks, you can manage even very large volumes of references, and it is also suitable for researchers.
Image 1. Tyrni data and availability of publication
In the above image, arrow 1 points to the publication data you should record, so that you can later find the publication in the library and prepare the referencing and the list of references on the basis of this data.
Arrow 2 indicates where you can access the subject headings and details. In addition to the publication data, you can see data on the subject headings and possibly content, as well as serial and classification data. Subject headings are particularly important: when you find a good publication, you will see the words used to describe it. The subject headings are also links; by clicking them, you will find other publications with the same subject heading. This way you will obtain new keywords for information retrieval, and you will also find new publications.
Arrow 3 points to the section where you can print the publication data, export it e.g. to RefWorks, save it to your bookshelf (in the Tyrni database) with your password or send the reference by email to your friend or yourself to be exported to Zotero or RefWorks.
Arrow 4 indicates where you can check the availability of the publication in SAMK’s libraries. In this case, the book is only available in the library of the Faculty of Business and Culture Rauma, but some (or most) publications can be found in several campus libraries. Therefore, do browse the holdings information to see if the book is available in your own campus library.
Remember that you can check the availability of journal issues through Tyrni by searching with the name of the journal and then checking the holdings information in the respective campus library.
Other databases
Other databases needed during the thesis process are listed on the library’s website (www.samk.fi/library), in the menu at the left upper edge, in “Find Information”. Once you choose your faculty and then your degree programme, you can find sources of information that are exactly suitable for that programme. Remember that with these links you also have remote access to these databases with your SAMK ID. You can obtain further information on the databases from your campus library or your faculty’s database guide, which is available in “Find Information” under your faculty. Through the databases, you will find e-books, e-magazines, articles, conference presentations etc. Do not hesitate to give it a try and, when necessary, contact your campus library. The library staff is happy to help you.
Information retrieval on the internet
Information retrieval on the internet has already been mentioned a couple of times in this document; however, some further comments are appropriate here. Information found with internet search engines (e.g. Google) needs to be evaluated very carefully. When you retrieve information for study purposes, you should use Google Scholar or Google Books. You will find more scientific and more study-oriented sources using these than with basic Google. However, remember that e.g. Google Scholar will not find all the material provided by the library’s databases, and not all the found sources will be available to you in their entirety.
Wikipedia is not a suitable source of information for those studying at a university of applied sciences. You can use Wikipedia for finding out about matters on your own, but it shall not be included in the list of references and, hence, it shall not be referred to.
Remember also that most of the instructions on the acquisition of information also concerns information retrieval on the internet. Therefore, use e.g. Google’s advanced search to tailor your search.
Where do I find…
Theses in an electronic form:
Theseus
Doria
Universities’ websites
Printed theses:
Tyrni
Databases of libraries at universities of applied sciences
Linda
Articles:
ABI/Inform
ACM
Ebsco
Emerald
ScienceDirect
E-books:
Tyrni (electronic books, limit search to “Online”)
Ebrary
Google Books