TH60101E: Strategic

Management
James Concannon
Academic Support Librarian,
London Geller College of Hospitality & Tourism.
This session

Section 1
Planning your Research
Section 2
Finding Resources

Section 3
Selecting Resources
Section 1
Planning your Research

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Planning your research

What information you need to inform and enhance your argument?

What else has been written on your subject?
What are the gaps in your knowledge?

Do you need:

• Theory ()
• Criticism ()
• Reviews ()
• Historical information ()
• Case studies (e.g. for marketing strategies)
• Company information (e.g. size, employees, competitors)

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Good places to start
• Your previous reading lists
• Reading advice from your tutors
• Bibliographies of books and articles you have read and found useful
• Keyword searches on Summon and Library catalogue
• Keyword searches on Databases
• Search Engines
Planning your searches

Identify keywords that you can use when searching catalogues & databases

•Which keywords are there in your assignment title?

General keywords •What is your main focus?

•How else might other authors refer to your keywords?

Synonyms •Try using a thesaurus

•What are the broader terms for the general subject or

Subjects context?

•Do you know any key authors, theorists etc.?

Key names •What authors might be relevant from your reading lists?

Date and •Are you looking at a certain period or place?

geographic range
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Section 2
Finding Resources

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Google & other search engines
Using Google for finding academic sources

Pros Cons
Library Resources
Using the library for finding academic sources

Pros Cons
What resources does the library provide?

Remotely
Library
through the library website

Books Ebooks

Journals eJournals

Magazines Databases

DVDs & CDs Streaming

Books and e-books
• Books from and beyond your reading lists
• Academic quality
• Our book collection contains:
– Key textbooks
– Theory, commentary, criticism
– Books on individual topics, companies,
techniques etc.
– Introductions
– Academic writing & research skills
Journals and Magazines
Published periodically for up-to-date research
E.g. quarterly, monthly, or weekly. Up to date
Academic journals Covering new
contain scholarly, peer-reviewed articles developments

Print and/or Electronic

Summon

Library’s search engine

Summon
News DVDs
• Easy to search all of our
Reports Reviews resources at once
Databases • Lots of results, which you
Books ebooks can narrow down with filters
Journals
• Not subject-specific
• Doesn’t include some
specialist image databases
Articles
Databases
Journal databases
Databases
Collections of journal articles relevant
to a certain subject. Journals

e.g. ProQuest (including Emerald)

Articles
EBSCOhost (especially Hospitality and
Tourism Complete),

ScienceDirect
 Databases
Market research or company information databases

e.g. Passport,
Mintel,
IBISWorld,

MarketLine,
Fame

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Tips for Searching

Tips for searching in other catalogues and databases

“Quotation marks” Searches for an exact phrase

* e.g. tour* will retrieve tour, tourist,

Truncation/wildcard tourism
Narrows results to find resources that
AND use both terms.
e.g. festival AND music
Expand results to find resources that
OR contain either terms.
e.g. aviation OR flight

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Subject guides

http://www.uwl.ac.uk/library/finding-and-using-information/subject-guides-libguides
Section 3
Selecting Resources

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Evaluate your results
Be selective
Use abstracts and summaries to determine relevancy
Indexes & contents
Search inside e-books by keyword
Evaluating sources
Can you identify who has written the information?
Is it an organisation or an individual?
Authorship
Are they qualified to write about the topic?
Does the web address help? E.g. .ac.uk or .gov.uk
Why does the source exist?
Purpose What are its aims?
Are you getting one opinion or a balanced view?
Is the source offering the right sort of information?
Relevance Does it answer your needs?
Can you verify the information?
Accuracy Are there links to other sources giving similar
views? Can you check that the facts are correct?
When was the source last updated?
Currency
Can you check the date of specific information?
Referencing

Remember:

You need to cite everything you use using

in-text citations AND a reference list.

• Keep thorough notes including:

• Full reference for each source
• Page numbers for each quote

• When paraphrasing in your notes remember to note the author

so you don’t mistake it for your own ideas

Use Cite Them Right Online

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Recap

Plan your research and chose keywords

Find resources in Summon using your keywords

Select resources carefully, using abstracts etc.

Record everything you use and use Cite Them

Right Online to format references
Any questions?

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