Seeking information and organizing knowledge are two tasks that should be done in a cycle even they are here presented separately. Look at the Information seeking and organizing process picture to get the whole picture of the matter. The process has four phases: finding information, choosing the sources, reading the material, and organizing knowledge. This page gives instructions on what to do in every phase of the process and how to use the services of TKK's library.
For the seminar article, use drawings such as concept, dialog and mind maps for organizing your knowledge on the topic during the process. Collect the references you find to your BiBTeX file.
Step 0: Original search terms
The topic gives first hints on what to use as search terms in the
first run. The tutor has given you a title, a question, or some
terms. Draw the first version of a concept map based on the information
you already have on the topic. The concept map should be revised
during the process.
Step 1: Choosing of sources.
TKK's library provides services for seeking
information and access to sources that are not available freely on the
Internet. The best place to start is the Nelli Portal ("In English"
link is up in the right corner as is the "log in" link). Library has short
instructions on how to use
Nelli for finding sources and every Nelli page has its own help
page, too (there are also instructions for remote access to
Nelli). Use either QuickSearch or MetaSearch, and choose (usually)
Computer Science as your area (look at an
example if you need more help. The example is referred to in the next steps
of the process, too). At least the following databases are good sources for computer
science: Academic Search Elite (EBSCO) eLehdet, ACM, Compendex (Ei
Village 2), Computer + Info Systems (CSA), IEEE/IEE Electronic
Library, INSPEC (WebSPIRS), and Science Direct (Elsevier)
SD. Especially good is the ACM
Digital Library that has full texts of ACM's articles but it is
not accessible through Nelli. Other databases you can find in Nelli, and you can have access to all of them (including ACM) through TKK's library (TKK's domain). All students have accounts in Nelli (using service
password). Logging in gives possiblity to store references and
searches into a bookshelf. You can also manage your references and get
BiBTeX entries for your findings through RefWorks (more instructions for
using RefWorks is given in Step 6). Common search engines such as Google give a wide spectrum of
information, but relevant findings may be left out and the authors may
not be the best for the topic.
Finding information
Step 2: Choosing the search terms
In the first run, use the terms of your initial concept map as search terms. Try also synonyms, related terms, definitions, near concepts, examples, etc. For finding good search terms, you can first use e.g. Encyclopedia Britannica or Wikipedia (as such, these are not primary sources for information for seminar papers). Later, you can use other combinations of search terms that the authors have used in their articles that you have already found.
Most likely those who have written an interesting article have done more work on the topic and published more articles, so use also the names of the authors as search terms. In addition to the above mentioned keyword search, check the reference lists of those articles that you have already found useful (or those that your tutor has given in the description of the topic) because usually articles have a section that presents related works or the previous phases of the work.
Step 3: Executing the search
Now it is time to press the execute button ("HAE" (fetch) in Nelli ;)
Step 4: Evaluation of the findings
If you get too little or too many articles as a result for your query, you need to do the search again with different search terms. When you have a suitable amount of findings, you should make the evaluation based on the origin, content, relevance and availability of the article. Of course, you need to choose those articles that are relevant for your own topic and available as full text. You can also find other interesting, related articles but you should leave them for later (of course, you should add their citing information to your BibTeX file).
Origin means where and when the article has been published. For scientific articles this means respectable publishers that uses double-blind review for choosing the articles for publishing, or invited articles written by a recognized guru of the topic. Articles in the above mentioned databases that are available in Nelli usually meet this definition. You should honor the inventors or discoverers, the authors that have described their findings first, by citing their original articles, if those are available. Especially for writing seminar paper, avoid marketing material (usually found with common search engines) and articles whose author is unknown (e.g. Wikipedia's articles).
In addition to listing the authors and titles of the articles, the Nelli portal gives a more information page. This page gives keywords of the article and sometimes also the abstract of the paper. This information should be enough for choosing the articles for reading.
Step 5: Priorisation
Because the process of seeking information and organizing knowledge is cyclic, your priorisation may change later when you know more about the topic. Of course, you should first read the material your tutor has pointed out for the topic.
During the seminar course (an in the real life), there is not enough time to read all interesting material. Some priorisation must be done for deciding what to read. One way to decide what to read first is to check that the source is really available. Then, you should somehow sort the articles based on their relevance for your own work.
Step 6: Finding the actual source
In the Nelli portal, the full text is "hidden" behind the logo 
that first gives SFX Linkging Service page where you
find a link to the full text of the article. ACM's articles are not available through Nelli, you should use directly the ACM Digital Library.
When you have really gotten your hands on the source, it is time to add its infromation to your BiBTeX file (of course, you can add items that you have not found or read to your file, but you should read them before citing them). You should write as much you know about the article to its BiBTeX entry. If you like to read on paper, it is useful to mark the prinouts so that you can use them later. (T-110.5190 and T-110.5290 seminars have instructions for using BiBTeX.)
Many of the search engines gives the BiBTeX entries (e.g. Google Scholar and CiteSeer), but Nelli does not provide them directly. Nelli can export the bibliographical information to RefWorks that is a personal database for managing bibliography. If you have not used RefWorks, see an example how to get BibTeX entries for your findings.
Step 7: Browsing
First scan through the paper in order to get the big picture: what is the work all about, what parts it has, what kind of paper it is (technical, theoretical, etc), and what problems the author triest to solve. Abstract of the paper usually gives answers to these questions except the structure of the paper.
Step 8: Reading
First, you should understand the terms the author of the paper is using. Then, try to find the most important arguments. Check what problems have been solved and what are not. Why the problems were not solved? When you have understood the paper, then you can make your own conclusions based on it: can you agree with the author, do you disagree with the author, or do you need more information for the judgement. The author can be uninformed, misinformed, or illogical. If not, and you have understood the topic, then you have to agree with the author, even when you do not like his conclusions.
While reading the article, remember to make notes! Underline, number, draw a mind map of the article, for example.
Step 9: Picking up essential content
What was essential for your own work? What may be essential for your future work, e.g. your Master's Thesis? If you have made good notes (for example in form of a mind map), finding the essential content afterwards is easy. Update your concept map, write the findings to your paper, and mark the reference to the place where you have written the findings. If you cannot explain with your own words, you may not have really understood what the author has said.
Step 10: Concepts
Concept maps are good tools when you try to understand concepts and their relationships on a topic area. You can draw the relationships, find what are sub areas, chop them into pieces, go back and widen the topic to related areas, and find the connections between "things". Separate instructions about concept maps and their use describes different techniques for organizing knowledge.
Step 11: Statements
Dialog maps are used for discussing the topic. You can specify the questions or problems and their answers and solutions, and write down the justifications, benefits and drawbacks of the topic. With a dialog map, you can have discussions with the author while reading: you can write down what the author has said, and what are his justifications, and what are your remarks on his findings. More about dialog maps is on the tools page.
Step 12: Start again from Step 1
Start the process again from Step 1 but do not forget to write your paper, too! It is quite easy to get stuck to some of the steps above.
Esko Nuutila's and Seppo Törmä's courses on Dialog, concept and mind maps as learning tools and their course together with TKK's library about Searching information and organizing it with dialog, concept and mind maps. Jouni Nevalainen helped with the Nelli Portal and searching information part, Virpi Palmgren and Kirsi Heino also participated organizing the above mentioned courses and gave valuable tools for seeking information. I thank Jukka Manner and Antti Ylä-Jääski for their comments.
Books
