This guide has been designed to provide a starting point for finding and using resources in the VU Library that will support Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) Degree, including Honours.

• Overview
• Books & ebooks
• Databases & journals
• Websites
• Standards / Patents
• Help

This page provides information on getting started on your assignment and keyword searching strategies.

• About this guide
• Welcome from VU Library
• What are keywords?
• Steps to a successful assignment
• Keyword search strategies
• Finding information 
• Boolean operators
• Keyword search strategies video
• Search the library

1. Collect all your information about the assignment.

• the handout on the assignment
• the type of resources required for your Reference List e.g. books, journal articles
• notes from classes on how to do the assignment

2. Analyse and prepare

• identify the Required Reading 
• identify keywords & search the Library for additional resources e.g. books, journal articles (see the boxes below to know what are keywords and for some keyword search strategies)

3. Read for Information

• read Required Reading and make notes
• read the additional articles etc. for information not in the Required Reading
• prepare each Reference as you read it, and ensure it is written in the suggested referencing style (Harvard or IEEE). Refer to Harvard or IEEE referencing guides for further assistance.

4. Start writing

• collect notes from your reading and start to build your assignment
• write the correct References for each of your readings for your Reference List

          Refer to the Academic Resources & Referencing page to read about the writing process and its steps.

Do you know what you are looking for? 
Think about what types of information you would require in order to tackle your assignment, e.g. textbooks, handbooks or manuals, ebooks, research articles, standards, government publications? Write down any significant words (keywords) that describe your topic.

Readings
Course or unit coordinators generally provide a list of references (reading material) linked to a unit that is a good starting point for getting familiar with the topic. If the reading list is not provided, then you can start with a textbook, encyclopedia or a subject dictionary to gain a basic understanding of the topic.

Know where to look for information sources
Use the Library Search, the library’s discovery platform to find library resources. The Library Search enables you to search across the range of library’s online and print resources in one search. View the results of your search in the retrieved list of records. Each record gives brief bibliographic details of the item and either a link that provides the full access to the item, or the information about the item’s location including how many copies are available.

Library catalogue
The classic library catalogue is still available and convenient as it allows for field searching (e.g. unit code) that the Library Search does not allow for. It is also the fastest tool for looking up the exact title or the author you are looking for.

For more information on using e-books, books, and journal articles view the Books & eBooks, or Databases & journals tabs.

Browse the shelves
A number of useful print material is available on the library shelves. A book is shelved according to its call number. Call numbers group similar subjects together on the library shelves. View the subject areas and call number ranges that are typically relevant to Architecture.

  This content is licensed to Victoria University under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Key words are words in a question that tell you the approach you should take when answering an assignment question. 

Keywords can include content (topic), limiting (restricting), and task (instruction) words.

Assignment example:

"Determine and describe the basic components of an electric power system for a small business centre with five 20 storey high rise buildings."

When you are searching for information for an essay question, assignment or project, use the identified content and limiting keywords to search for information sources in our Library Search and online.

Sample assignment topic: "Determine and describe the basic components of an electric power system for a small business centre with five 20 storey high rise buildings."

Once you have analysed your topic and done some preliminary reading, you are ready to break down the chosen research topic into key concepts selected from both the topic and your readings. It is best to identify 2 to 4 key concepts, with each concept containing up to 2 words, which will serve as keywords or search terms you'll type in Library Search to find relevant resources.  You might need to build separate search strategies for different aspects of your research as well as use a variety of keywords to ensure you cover all aspects of the topic.

Source: University of Texas Libraries

If, for example, you want to focus on 'electric power systems' and its 'basic components', list your main concepts or keywords:

electric power systems
basic components

Apply the following strategies to combine them:

• for a basic search, enter the identified keywords in the search field, for example: electric power systems
• if you want to combine 'electric power systems' and some others aspects of your research such as: basic design, usage, distribution, transmission, etc. in your searches, you can also use the Boolean operators (AND, OR & NOT) to narrow or broaden your searches, or exclude some search terms from your searches. The use of Boolean operators allows constructing more complex search statements, for example, electric power systems AND (usage OR management OR regulation) AND design
• think of possible synonyms and related words or phrases, for example, "electric power system" OR "alternative power sources"
• search exact phrases by enclosing the phrase in quotes, for example, "electric power system"
• find a term with various endings by using as a truncation symbol represented by an asterisk (*), for example, system* will retrieve system, systems, and systematic 
• group related or synonymous terms together by placing them in parentheses, for example, (design* OR architecture OR model*). Note that model* includes both modelling (Australian English) or modeling (American English) spelling. 

Boolean Operators are the words AND, OR, and NOT used in library databases that can make searches more precise, and save you time by removing the need to go through all the search results in order to find most relevant articles.

AND narrows the search resulting in more focused results, for instance, searching for  “fuel cell” AND "solar', all articles in your result will include both concepts (keywords)

OR broadens the search by instructing the database to search for any of the words, which is particularly useful for synonyms or related terms, i.e. “fuel cell” OR “solar” OR “lithium”

NOT narrows the search by instructing the database to remove all unnecessary search results, for example “fuel cell” NOT “solar”