HOW TO PERFORM AN EXHAUSTIVE SEARCH ON A TOPIC

What should I do to make sure I have performed an exhaustive search for publications on a topic?
Include, but not limited to (depending on the subject area):
1. Search WorldCat
2. Search all appropriate article indexes to which UNL patrons have access
3. Perform the search on multiple article indexes using MultiSearch (for UNL users). Under E-Resources on the Library Home Page, click on "M", then follow the link listed as “Multi-Search (for UNL students, faculty, staff),” you will be able to search in multiple article indexes at one time. All pertinent article indexes will not be covered in Multi-Search and the search interface is very basic. Therefore the results cannot be considered to be a comprehensive set. However preliminary use of Multi-Search will give you an idea of what article indexes will give you results for your search topic (what databases to search more intensely).
4. Search for conference proceedings - PapersFirst - Indexes articles in conference proceedings in all fields, including engineering and the sciences.
5. Search for dissertations – Dissertation Abstracts. Indexes doctoral dissertations and some theses in all fields. Same interface for obtaining the item and exporting to RefWorks as in PapersFirst.
6. Search Institutional Repositories (The UNL institutional repository is called “Digital Commons”. It highlights working papers, journal articles, dissertations, and theses of UNL affiliates.) - Use ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories) http://roar.eprints.org/. Choose "Content Search". Use OAISTER http://www.oaister.org/ to take advantage of a different searching mechanism that could potentially uncover more sources (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).
7. Do a Google (choose Advanced Search). or Google Scholar search (choose Advanced Scholar Search for phrase searching - or use quotes around key phrases in the title.)
8. Search patents at http://www.uspto.gov/, http://ep.espacenet.com/, Google Patents. (Refer to Patent Searching link on this blog.)
9. Search U.S. Government Web sites (EPA, DOD, DOE, DOT, etc. AND the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)'s Public Scientific & Technical Information Network (STINET) at http://stinet.dtic.mil/ and the National Transportation Library (http://ntl.bts.gov/). Use links from UNL gov docs page http://www.unl.edu/libr/govdocs/
10. Search Nebraska State links http://www.nebraska.gov/dynamicindex.html (e.g. NE Dept. of Roads http://www.dor.state.ne.us/), search Nebraska State Government Publications online at http://www.nlc.state.ne.us/docs/pilot/pilot.html and Lancaster County links http://interlinc.ci.lincoln.ne.us/.
11. E-prints are considered part of the grey (usually cannot be found using traditional indexes) literature. They are "rough drafts" of articles that will be submitted to a journal for publication. They can be found on the Internet, through servers that are specially set-up to accommodate authors in certain fields. For example, high-energy physics (SPIRES - Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System). Search e-print/preprint servers such as ArXiv - http://arxiv.org/ - which covers physics, mathematics, computer science and quantitative biology. Use the advanced search and read the hints.
See Directory of Preprint servers - http://www.library.uow.edu.au/eresources/UOW026409.html.
12. Search open access content Public Library of Science (PLoS), BioMed Central (BMC)
13. Use Citeseer http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/ Scientific Literature Digital Library and Search Engine that focuses primarily on the literature in computer and information science.
14. Follow citations (Web of Science, Google Scholar, Citeseer) of works of interest.
15. Set up RSS feeds or email alerts to maintain currency as new articles are published.