Library supports your information needs

Support and assistance for information seeking

Explore the information search guide below and participate in training sessions.

You can get personal assistance for information retrieval issues through individual and small-group guidance sessions held in the Teams online environment by appointment.

Please let us know if there are several of you attending the same online guidance session. If you would rather solve your information retrieval challenges by visiting the library, please contact us.

Information searching process

• Get your search terms right
  • Focus on key ideas: Which words best describe your topic? Think about your topic from different angles and use several terms, not just one or two.
  • Use synonyms: Find different words that mean the same thing to improve your search.
  • Use tools for help: Dictionaries, tables of contents, and term banks (like Finto) can help you find the right words. You can also use AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot to brainstorm keywords.
• Search techniques
  • A database is a place where you can find sources like articles, books, and conference papers. Some databases give you full texts, meaning you can read the whole article. Others only give you reference data, like the title, author, and publication year. If the full text isn’t available, search for the article by title in HAMK Finna to find it in another database. All databases work similarly: you search using words or phrases, see a list of results, and use filters to narrow your search.
  • Sorting your search results: Results are usually sorted by relevance (best match). You can change this to sort by for example time (newest first).
  • Phrase search: To search for exact phrases, use quotation marks. For example, “climate change” will find only results where the words appear together.
  • Use filters: Filters help you narrow results, such as by date or peer-reviewed articles. Take a look at the databases’ filters: for example, in nursing databases like CINAHL, you can filter by patient age or gender.
• Don’t give up
  • Searching for information takes time. As you search, your topic and search terms will become clearer.

HAMK Finna

HAMK Finna is the online library for HAMK. You can find books, journals, research articles, and resources here. For example, it has RT Tietoväylä (construction information), SFS Online (standards) and Edilex (legal information).

All online resources are available 24/7 with HAMK ID, except for Epress newspapers, which are available only on campus through the Eduroam network.

If you don’t have a HAMK ID, you can still access e-resources at the library except fot Ellibs e-books and SFS Online.

Other information sources

• Finna.fi: A national search engine for Finnish libraries and museums. You can find theses, dissertations, and open learning materials. Note that you cannot access e-books through Finna.fi.

• Google Scholar: Google’s search engine for research articles. It is not a database in the sense that no information is stored in Scholar, but it searches the open internet. It’s better for academic searches than regular Google because it searches for scientific information, which means that for example advertisements are excluded from the results. Create a library link to HAMK’s e-resources for easier access to articles. If you get few results on Google, it does not mean that there is not a comprehensive body of published material on the subject, such as professional or scientific material.

Good and high-quality source

In your assignments, you can use different types of sources, such as books, research articles, newspaper articles, or blog posts. However, not all sources are equally reliable. The reliability of a source can be assessed in different ways, for example by the publication channel: a scientific journal is a more valid source than a newspaper. You can also check for bias: Does the source have commercial, political, or other interests that could affect its objectivity? For example, company websites are designed to sell the company’s products and services, not to provide objective information. One way to assess reliability is to examine whose voice and whose views are being expressed.

The evaluation of an expert source

• A scientific expert provides background information that puts phenomena in perspective and can be referred to as the prevailing truth.
• A professional expert offers practical knowledge, that the researcher may not have.
• An experience-based expert (e.g., a blog post) gives personal opinions, which should not be generalized. It can be used in the text as an example and as a lead to the subject.

Using sources in your thesis

The sources used in the theoretical part of the thesis must be scientific data. If this is not available, other sources should be used to demonstrate familiarity with the topic. Scientific sources are the default in the thesis: they are referred to in accordance with HAMK’s reference policy, for example:
Up to 80 percent of players in the SM-liiga say they have suffered from back problems (Kiekkonen 2016, 36).

If you use non-scientific sources (like blogs), make it clear that they are not scientific data. This way you will not accidentally claim, for example, that a blog post by ice hockey player Teemu Mailanen is a scientific source. Can you spot the difference between the following examples?

According to Mailanen (2016), back problems are common among ice hockey players.

Teemu Mailanen (2016), who plays in the champions league, says in his blog that back problems are common among ice hockey players.

In the upper example, Mailanen’s blog post is misleadingly referred to as if it were scientific data. In the lower example, it is openly stated that it is a blog.

If you use images in your report, also include source information for them and ensure that you have the right to use the image, see Aalto University’s ImagOA guide.

Artificial intelligence and information searching

You can use AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot for:

• Finding keywords
• Clarifying terms
• Getting an overview of a topic

However, remember that AI does not always give accurate information. AI tools can sometimes produce false data or create sources that don’t exist. Never share personal or sensitive information with AI tools. Also, remember that copying AI chat texts directly into assignments and theses is plagiarism, unless you have cited it properly.

There are also AI applications suitable for scientific information searching. Examples of such applications include Semantic Scholar, Research Rabbit, Litmaps, Elicit and Keenious. The search results of these applications are scientific articles, which can often be visualized in different ways in different applications instead of the traditional results list. However, some results are behind a paywall, as in Google Scholar, and it is also important to be aware of security and copyright issues when using these AI applications. You can test all these applications for free, but many require a paid account for extended use.

If you have any questions about using AI for different tasks, please contact your course teacher. They will tell you how you can use AI during the course.