Information retrieval is an art, with creativity as a core ingredient.
When done right, it is fun.
With success, it is fabulously rewarding and an enriching experience.
For the past year and a half, my main job has been searching, searching, and more searching.
Using different databases my main task has been to cull together large number of documents for systematic literature reviews as well as compiling endless lists of bibliographies.
One of the most difficult tasks has been requests for broken citations – oftentimes, only the author and a date are given. So how to find these? Let me give you a recent example. Find: “Smith, 1992.” On the surface, it seems an impossible task. There are a number of ways to tackle this puzzle: but there’s an easier way. This is where the beauty of Google Scholar comes in.
Step #1: Go to “Advanced Google Search”
Step #2: In the Author box, type in “Smith”
Step #3: In the Date box, enter “1992” to “1992”
Step #4: In Find articles with all of the words, enter: “mental housing”
The final step is the most crucial. Since the domain of the project deals with mental housing, I want to narrow all of my articles to this subject. The beauty is that this works with most subjects. The more terms you can throw out, the more precise the recall. As an “art,” there is always some guesswork involved; nothing is ever guaranteed. But if you’re down and out, and need to find a citation quickly, Google Scholar is extremely effective. I encourage you to try a few searches with a document in hand, and try the above. Check your results and see whether it comes close, or at least within manageable distance. I bet you'll have a fun time regardless.
Information retrieval is an art, with creativity as a core ingredient. When done right, it is fun. With success, it is fabulously rewarding and an enriching experience. For the past year and a half, my main job has been searching, searching, and more searching. Using different databases my main task has been to cull together large number of documents for systematic literature reviews as well as compiling endless lists of bibliographies. 
2 comments:
Allan,
Jacso would disagree with the idea that there is anything beautiful about Google scholar. Under what circumstances, do you think, GS is useful for different library user groups? Articulating that is the challenge because I think it has its place, despite its weaknesses.
Dean
Very good point, Dean. I am not disagreeing with Jasco about the overall "beauty" of GS. (That's perhaps for another blog entry in the future). It's apples and oranges.
GS is an effective tool which can help users (particularly physicians and academics) who need to find an article (or monograph) which has no *page number* and *title* for reference. All that is available is a *surname* and *date*...
In these circumstances, GS can help find those needle in a haystack-type documents. There is nothing beautiful about the process, in this regard...but the effectiveness can be quite breathtaking if successful.
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