Research Skills Big6 - Step 3. Location and Access

The purpose of this step is to find out the information from various sources, no matter electronical or physical address. It involves internet searching and library catalog searching.

There are two layers of meanings in this step. First is locating sources (intellectually and physically). Second is finding information within the source. To do this, students may need to think backward and keep on asking yourself from time to time that what the topic of the project is. Take Food Waste in Hong Kong as an example. Students may need to ask the following questions.

• What is the definition of Food Waste?
• Is there any official data about Food Waste in Hong Kong?
• Is there any news about this?
• Is there any NGOs trying to tackle this problem?
• How about government? Does she do anything on this?
• Is there any solution to solve this problem?
• Is there any successful example in other countries?

After listing out all the questions you need to answer, you need to think about the key words/ phrase about this project. Once you get the direction for the information you need, you can start your searching journal.

Let's generally divide all the data into two types, which include soft copy and hard copy. The skill for searching these two types of data is a little bit different.

The Skill for searching data/information in soft-copy format:

Internet is a powerful tool to search data/information in soft-copy format. Basically, there are four steps to search data in the internet.

Step 1: Select a search engine

There are many search engines in internet. The following are quite common.

• Ask
• Bing
• Blekko
• Dogpile
• DuckDuckGo
• Google
• Yahoo
• Hong Kong Public Library 

Step 2: Choose a few of the most specific or relevant keywords or phrases to describe your topic.

Step 3: Assess your results.

           There are huge websites found. what you need to sort out the website with pinpoint          
           information.

Step 4: Repeat above steps on different search engines if necessary.

If you still don't know what to do, you can go to the following website. It breaks down the searching skill preciously. Just do each step one by one.

• 9 Steps for Search-the-Internet

Here is the example

go to  http://www.google.com and do searching, using keyword “food waste” + “statistics” + “Hong Kong”.  Then you got the search result.

Choose the web page “Food Waste Stat - Feeding Hong Kong and read though the information inside. Finally, bookmark the link if you have quote the passage or information in it.

The Skill for searching data/information in hard-copy format:

Library is a place full of information, especially for the hard-copy format materials. The searching skill is more or less the same. But this time students go to the Library Catalogue Page instead.

Here are some searching guideline for you all to follow.

Step 1: Go to the Library Catalogue Page

Step 2: Input the Keywords or Phrase and then press Search

Step 4: Sort out the information you need and mark down the call number of the books. You can also do the reservation process at the same time. 

If you have any questions, don't hesitate. Just ask the librarian directly. For HKPL website, you can find "Ask the Librarian" on your right-hand side. You can chat with the librarian and get instant response. 

Searching Tips:

To enhance searching skill, you need to learn some punctuation, symbols and operators mentioned in the following website. They can help you to get specific search results.

Punctuation, symbols & operators in search

Students, you need to remember that not all the information is useful and meaningful to your project. Don't just copy and paste. Analysis is needed. Citation is needed.