Developing your information search

The further you progress through your course, the more you will be expected to seek out new and specialised sources of information.

Building further on the skills and information introduced on the 'Finding information' page, this page covers how to plan, carry out and record in-depth searches for literature and other sources.

Planning your search

A search strategy is a plan to guide you to find relevant, timely and quality sources of information for use in your assignment. Developing a search strategy can focus the mind on what it is you need to find and what you need to do to find it. It is also fundamental to carrying out an efficient and effective search for information.

See our video, 'Developing a search strategy in six steps', which covers the steps explored below.

Approaches for developing your search strategy

There are techniques which can help you to develop a search strategy. Choosing which technique to opt for can sometimes depend on the discipline you are studying. For example, PICO is a popular tool in medicine and health, research frames are used in the arts and SPICE is a common tool for social scientists. Below are examples of techniques with links to further information:

• PICO and SPICE
• mind/concept maps
• research frames
• writing lists of key words

Using databases

Databases are structured collections of information. In the context of "bibliographic” databases available through libraries, this information usually concerns journal articles, potentially alongside research reports and chapters from scholarly books. However, there are also databases of images, law cases and many other types of information. At Canterbury Christ Church University, the databases and other tools subscribed to by the library can be accessed through the Find Databases A-Z menu on the LibrarySearch home page.

Details of databases for your discipline can be found through the library’s subject guides, including databases freely available online as well as library resources. If your topic is highly specialised or unusual, your Academic Librarian can advise on the best places to look.

Databases do not always feel as simple or intuitive to use as resources like Google Scholar or LibrarySearch. However, their results can often be more manageable and relevant. Reasons for this include:

• Subject specificity: databases usually cover one field of knowledge.
• Quality control: databases generally have criteria for what will be included, meaning that they contain a high percentage of good quality information.
• Structure: information on databases is stored and searched in structured ways, allowing more control over your searches.

Searching databases effectively

Each database offers different ways to search and access content. Our top tips on using databases are:

• Start simple – use keywords, not sentences.
• Refine – use refining options to narrow down your searches. For example, most databases allow you to limit your search by date published or source type, and some offer geographical location, peer-reviewed or age group as limits.
• Search tips – look at any search hints or tips that could make your search more effective or efficient. For example, some databases offer advanced search options or the ability to use techniques such as “phrase searching”.

You can contact your Academic Librarian for advice on searching subject-specific databases. If you have trouble accessing databases or online materials such as e-books/journals, read our off-campus access guide.

Each database will have different features. Some of the most common tools you can use on them are:

This video explores one common approach to searching which works across many different databases:

You may also want to consult our database guides for more information about how to search specific databases. Most databases will also have comprehensive help sections on their sites.

Finding images

Visual information

Visual information is everywhere. We consciously and subconsciously read images when browsing social media, researching for assignments, seeing adverts or watching programmes and films. Visual literacy is a valuable skill to develop, it is the way we see, interact with, and interpret meaning from the visual environment around us. It is also how we use and create imagery to communicate meaning to others.

Visual literacy is not only important for those studying or working within the creative industries. Here are three examples:

• a scientist needs to understand visual communication to disseminate their findings to the public
• a teacher uses their understanding of visual imagery to engage students
• a digital content creator must develop skills of visual or audio description to ensure accessibility for all

Below are questions you can use when thinking about an image

• Where did you see the image?
• How would you describe the image?
• How did the image make you feel?
• What was the purpose of the image?
• Who created the image?
• When was the image created?
• How was the image created?

Where to search for images

Many of us have searched for images on Google, but did you know that there are other ways to find images online? The library subscribes to image resources or databases and there are open web image search engines.

Images found through library databases are:

• high quality and original
• easy to find as they’ve been professionally indexed in resources designed for study and research
• joined by information to help with analysis and referencing
• copyright cleared for educational purposes

Images found on the open web:

• can be chosen from a wide range and variety
• may be poorer quality, manipulated or AI generated
• are held on platforms with adverts or subscription levels, with varying search functions and citations, and unclear indexing.
• will need copyright checking

Below is a summary on the differences between library and open web databases for finding images.

Tips for searching for images

It can be challenging to find the image you want. Below is a short video explaining how to search for images, including how to develop keywords and how to choose a database or search engine.

You can learn more about developing keywords for your searches in the Finding information page.

Library and open web image databases

There are many places to find images, ranging from the familiar, such as Google, to the more specialist such as VADs online resource for visual arts. It is important to understand the differences between databases so that you can choose the most relevant to use for your search, although searching a variety of databases can provide a wider choice. You can access library databases and our recommended resources through LibrarySearch and the ‘Find databases A-Z’ link on the left of the homepage.

You can find images within these library databases and recommended resources:

• AM explorer
• JSTOR image search (Artstor public collections)
• British Cartoon Archive
• British newspapers 1600-1850
• Digimap
• Digital Public Library of America
• Drama Online
• Early European Books
• Encyclopedia Britannica
• Europeana Collections
• John Johnson Collection
• Louvre, the collections database
• Oxford Art Online
• Oxford Dictionary of National Bibliography
• Queer Pasts
• Smithsonian Open Access
• VADS
• Vogue Archive

For online sources of images, see our ‘Image search engines’ Padlet below.

If you find an image and would like to use it in your work, remember to check the copyright licence and include a reference. You can access our Copyright Helper via the links on the left of the LibrarySearch homepage. Cite them Right is our guide to referencing which you can access through Find databases A-Z on LibrarySearch or in print copies in the library. Contact your Academic Librarian if you need further support.

Finding moving images

We have databases for film, programmes and documentaries that you can access through LibrarySearch and the ‘Find databases A-Z’ link:

BFI Player

BFI Player is a video on-demand streaming service from the British Film Institute showing critically acclaimed, landmark and archive films.

• BFI Player guide
• Introducing BFI Player video
• Re-subscribing after a year video

Kanopy

Kanopy is a video streaming service which gives you access to a curated catalogue of over 30,000 educational documentaries and classic films from leading producers.

• Kanopy guide
• Introducing Kanopy video

Box of Broadcasts (BoB)

BoB is an online off-air TV and radio service where you can watch programmes from the archive, create clips and search for forthcoming programmes to record.

Box of Broadcasts guide

Copyright and images

When you are searching for images, it’s important to understand copyright. The Learning Skills Hub Referencing page explains the impact of copyright on your work and offers guidance on referencing images.

Copyright protects ideas when they are physically expressed, for example as a book, film, painting, music, computer game, or advertisement. It belongs to the creator, commissioner or employer and lasts for their lifetime plus seventy years or in the case of anonymous works, for seventy years from publication. The copyright holder has copying, sharing, lending and performance rights.

As a student or staff member, you can copy a work if:

• There is a legal exception
• It is publicly available
• You have permission, or
• You have a licence

One exception is ‘fair dealing’ and educational use, which allows you to copy or use a limited amount of copyrighted work. It should be:

• For non-commercial and private study
• For criticism or review
• For parody, caricature or pastiche (not derogatory with clear differences to the original)

You should always reference any images you use in your work. See our ‘referencing images’ video for guidance on how to do this in Harvard style. Style guides such as Cite them right will also give useful tips.

Reflect

Take a moment to reflect on the role visual literacy plays within your studies or discipline (e.g. presenting, research, or creating). Remember to consider both the ways you interact with imagery and the visual information you also create for others to consume. How will you use the library and databases to support you in your studies?

Using archives and special collections

Depending on your subject or assignment, you may want to explore more specialist sources. In this section we will consider how to access archival and special collections. You can find other specialist sources through our databases and you can check which would be relevant for you by checking your library subject guide.

Archives are repositories for rare and unique primary source material. They contain first-hand evidence such as letters, diaries, notebooks, reports, photographs, and sketches, as well as ephemeral items such as posters or tickets.

An archive will care for these items, ensuring a safe environment that will preserve them for future generations.

Archives collect material based on the organisations they serve. E.g.

• Colleges and universities
• Companies
• Government
• Local government
• Cathedrals
• Historical societies
• Museum collections
• Societies and organisations

The University holds the following archives:

• The University Archive
• The Mary Braddon Archive
• The Sarah Grand Archive
• The Nic Costa Archive

Some useful links for discovering more about archives in the UK and the rest of the World:

• JISC Archives Hub
• ArchiveGrid
• UK National Archives
• Archives and Special Collections at CCCU
• Kent Archives and Local History
• Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library
• JSTOR Community Collections
• Archives Portal Europe

What is a special collection?

A special collection is a group of books that are focused on a single topic, such as nineteenth century children’s fiction. Often a library will have collections based on the needs of its community. Archives can usually only be viewed on request.

The University holds the following special collections:

• Historical children’s fiction collection
• Historic collection
• The works of W.B. Maxwell
• The works of John Strange Winter
• Quaker Books from the Maidstone Society of Friends Meeting House

See below for some images from our own archives and special collections:

How are archives organised?

Archives contain both published and unpublished materials, and this material can be in any format, e.g. print, moving image, sound materials, artworks, artefacts; or digital surrogates of these items.

These items are organised by their provenance and kept in original order. Archival boxes can contain a mix of items such as letters, newspaper cuttings, photographs and notebooks all belonging to the same person.

Archival documents are given accession numbers and arranged into archival groups (or fonds), series, files and items.

• The fonds provides an overview of an entire collection. It is the highest level of description in an archive catalogue and describes the person or institution that created the records, e.g. Canterbury Christ Church University.
• The series relates to a particular activity or type of record, for example the departments within the university, e.g. library.
• Within a series, there may be files separating the types of documents, e.g. minute books.

The example below illustrates how the university's records are organised within the archive:

How can I use archives and special collections?

Once you have identified an archive or a resource that will help you in your research, you need to consider how you can access it. If the item has been digitised, this makes your life much simpler, but if it hasn’t you may need to visit the archive in person.

When preparing to visit an archive:

• Check opening hours and instructions for visitors on their website.
• Check if you need to email or submit a request for the sources you would like to view.
• Consider emailing your research question and they may be able to offer advice; however, if it is a complex enquiry and you are unable to visit the archive in person, you could hire a local researcher.
• Check beforehand what you can take into the reading room (laptop, pencils, books, magnifying glass, extra clothing, etc.).
• Plan what you need to do in the time you have at the archives.

See our video on ‘Finding aids in archives’ to learn about tools that can help you prepare for an archive visit.

What happens when I get there?

Most archives have rules on how you use the material.

• Your hands must be clean and you will not be allowed to eat or drink in the research area.
• You may be supplied with an archival pillow to support the item or snake weights to ensure that pages are held open without undue pressure on the spine.
• You may have to take notes with a pencil.
• There may be fees for scanning or photographing items.
• You will need to ensure that you are aware of the copyright status of the item and how you can cite it in your works.

Using archival sources in your research

Archives offer researchers unique opportunities to explore previously unresearched material. Writing about unique material has its challenges, as there may be no available secondary source material which directly discusses the material and you will need to think about the wider critical discourse around the topic.

Below are questions you can use to critically analyse archival sources:

• What type of document is it? Who created it and why? e.g. personal, government, etc.
• When was the document created? What physical details reveal this? e.g. frank marks, types of ink and paper used, handwriting.
• What was/is the purpose of the document? e.g. record admissions to a hospital, a personal account, bills of sales.
• What was the creator's situation or intention at the time of creation? What is the creator's relationship to the document? What evidence shows this? e.g. is it signed, was it part of a larger collection/archive, is the author an employee?
• Are there inconsistencies or ambiguities in the document? What makes it reliable or unreliable? e.g. are important pieces of information such as names or addresses missing or obscured.
• What does the document reveal about the context in which it was created? Does it add to a body of existing knowledge, does it provide new unique insights into the period?

Citing archival material

Most referencing systems will provide guidance on how you cite a resource. Harvard recommends the following format:

Surname, Initial. (Year) Title of manuscript, Date. Name of collection containing manuscript and reference number, Location of manuscript in archive or repository.

Example:

Maxwell, W. B. (1920) Letter to Henry Maxwell, 7 June. Braddon Archive CC/U/BR/014.7, Canterbury Christ Church University Library Archives, Canterbury.

Open access information

The university library service provides access to books, journals and other electronic resources which usually require payment to access. However, there is also plenty of high-quality information which is freely available which you can use both during your studies and after you graduate. As with all information sources, make sure you evaluate the information you find online.

General internet searching

All the advice on the finding information and evaluating information pages are useful when you search the web for information – think about what you are looking for, the words you search with and the reliability of the information that you find. Small tweaks to your searching habits can also be useful. For example, if you are looking for an exact phrase, enclosing it in “quotation marks” specifies that you want this – and exactly this – to be searched. Or if you do not want an AI summary at the top of your search results on Google, you can add –ai to the end of your search.

It can sometimes be helpful to limit your search to particular types of page – most search engines have a way to do this. For instance, UK government web pages can be found on the “domain” gov.uk. This means that a Google search for “social care” site:gov uk will find only web pages from local or national government. Advanced search pages on search engines offer many other options for narrowing internet searches – for example, see our video on using Google Advanced Search.

Although Google is the world’s most-used search engine, there are many other search engines available, which are often designed to do specific jobs. DuckDuckGo, for instance, does not track your previous searches, WolframAlpha is useful for scientific queries and Bing can be better than Google if you are looking for videos or images.

When we search, shop and browse online, each of us is in our own “filter bubble”. Search engines, online shops and social networks track what we search, read, like and buy, and use this to customise our experience on their sites and apps. This is often useful, but for academic research it can be a bad thing. When different people search for the same thing on search engines such as Google, for instance, they see different results on the first page, customised to their (sometimes subconscious) preferences. For some searches, the differences may be quite minor. But for controversial topics, there can be major differences, and you are likely to see only content which fits in with your existing opinions. In academic work, we try to consider alternative points of view – this can be tricky if you can’t see them! Eli Pariser’s TED Talk on this topic from 2011 is still relevant.

Free sources of academic information

An increasing amount of academic information is being made available Open Access, that is free of charge to read, and often to reuse, if it has a Creative Commons licence. This is due to efforts to increase the availability and transparency of research. However, be wary of sites that claim to circumvent copyright – true Open Access is legal and with the full consent of the creators of the work.

Google Scholar can help you identify Open Access material, but many articles are still behind a paywall. These are three key sites to use for finding open access academic information:

• Directory of Open Access Books – a collection of over 100,000 peer-reviewed academic books available to access free-of-charge online. You can browse by subject or search through the books.
• Directory of Open Access Journals – a central place to find thousands of Open Access journals and the millions of articles published in them.
• Institutional repositories – many universities and other research organisations make versions of the research published by their staff available free of charge (even some articles which would normally require payment to access). These are known as repositories. For example, CCCU has a repository known as Pure.
• CORE – a central service, searching the contents of many different repositories of Open Access material from universities, research organisations and other institutions. This includes papers made available through “green” Open Access, which would normally require a subscription to read.

"Grey" literature

Libraries are traditionally most interested in books and journals, but other forms of literature can be useful and relevant. Grey literature is the catch-all term for these other sources of information. It can include theses, guidelines, policy documents, statistics and reports from organisations such as charities and research institutions.

Grey literature can be found through a general internet search, but may be tricky to identify. It is often worth considering which organisations or government departments might have relevant information and searching their websites directly. Organised efforts to track grey literature have mostly run out of funding, but some subject-specific resources persist, such as the King’s Fund Library Database, where grey literature relating to health and social care is recorded.

Libraries and their electronic resources

Libraries can be an incredibly useful source of information throughout your life, not just during your time at university. If you live locally, you could use CCCU libraries through our alumni membership scheme, but there are also valuable resources available through public and specialist libraries.

Recording your search

Some subjects and specific assessments require you to record your search process, as a record for yourself, your tutors and others within your field or discipline. Even if you don’t need to submit a record of your search process, it can be very useful for you to keep track of your searches

To learn more, see our video on the benefits of recording your search process.

What are the benefits of recording your search?

• It can help you to manage your time showing what you have done and what you need to do next. Keeping track of search words used in one database, helps you to keep consistency when searching other databases.
• Recording your search process means you can reflect on your search process while it is in action e.g. finding too much or too little, you can look back to see if you have missed a step or need to add a keyword
• Showcase your search expertise: shows your tutor that you know what is involved in searching for literature review and can apply it in real life. It will show that you know how to find and retrieve sources to suit your task. For example, if your task asked you to find journal articles, your tutor can look to see that you searched resources that provide access to journals. A record shows a tutor whether you carried out a thorough search for evidence on which to base your argument, rather than searching in just one database for example. They’ll also be able to see if there is any bias in your sources that could have impacted on your conclusions.
• Benefits wider research community as gives understanding of what was covered in your review. They can then replicate or build on your process while carrying out your research, for example replicate your search to see what new research has been published since you conducted your review.

Which elements of the search process should be recorded?

These are the basic elements of a search process that you should record. Always check your module handbook or speak to your tutor to follow any assessment guidelines.

• The name of the resource searched e.g. LibrarySearch and, if necessary, the version/platform/date range of the resource e.g., Ovid MEDLINE 1946 to January Week 4 2026.
• The search words used, and any techniques deployed such as Boolean operators, truncation or phrase searching e.g. “global warming” AND “polar bear*”.
• The filters applied e.g. limiting the search to items published since 2015.
• Then number of studies retrieved from the resource in total, in each subsequent stage and how many were identified as relevant to the chosen topic after applying specific inclusion/exclusion criteria e.g.
• “global warming” AND “polar bears” = 52
• “global warming” AND “polar bears”, items published since 2015 = 32
• “global warming” AND “polar bears”, items published since 2015, relevant to geographic location of Norway = 12
• Any additional search techniques that were applied e.g. hand searching reference lists of relevant articles, contacting authors directly or citation chaining.

Tools for recording your search process

There are many methods available to record and communicate your search process. It can be as simple as keeping written notes of your search and then communicating the process in a paragraph in your literature review.

However, for more complex searches, you may need to use a highly structured recording tool to record and communicate your search process. View the options below and reflect on which methods suit your study preferences and your assignment guidelines.

Types:

• Keep a search diary: make written notes, screenshots or voice notes.
• Create a search table: when, where and how you searched.
• Use an advanced tool for recording searches and reporting literature searches for systematic reviews:
• PRISMA
• PRISMA-S extension
• Cochrane Search Report Form

There are tools that can make recording your search easier. In our earlier section on databases, you learned about different functions including:

• Search history, where you can view previous searches including key words, filters and results. Learn more in our ‘search history’ video.
• Create a personal login and save, track, set alerts and re-run your search. This is useful for those undertaking research requiring regular checking for new publications. View our database guides
• Reference management software can organise and store references. Try using a product such as RefWorks (available via LibrarySearch), Mendeley or Zotero as part of your search process. Export all your search results to it and then use it to de-duplicate your results (if it has that function).

Key takeaways

During and after your time at university you will encounter different information-related tasks, some of these may be familiar and easy to complete, whereas others may require you to think more about new types of resources and how they can be accessed. In this page, we have explored creating a search strategy to plan, evaluate and refine your information search. We have learnt about databases and how, through the library subscriptions, you can access specialist and diverse sources which are not readily available elsewhere. Our section on finding images exposes the challenges of finding images when there is so much choice, and signposts routes to discovering images for academic purposes. Next, the guidance on accessing archives and special collections illustrates ways to explore sources which offer a wealth of opportunity for new discoveries. In contrast, our section on open information illustrates how, even if you have left university, you can discover and access information including academic sources. We conclude our page with guidance on recording your search strategy, a key part of your information search which will allow you to reflect on, refine and share your approach with others.

Credit

Written by David Bedford, Lynsey Blandford, Claire Choong and Kate Davies.

Last updated 2026.