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What
Effective Database Searching Requires of
You
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Non-Linear
Thinking
Database searching
requires both linear and non-linear thinking.
- Linear
Thinking
- Most of the
time we think in a linear manner, such as in terms of if "A"
and if "B" therefore "C.
- Example
A:
- If
politicians lie ("A") and
- The
President is a politician ("B"),
- Therefore,
("C") the President lies.
- Example B:
- If A, the
sun is overhead, and
- B, we lie
out in the sun for several hours without sunblock, then
- C, we will
get a sunburn.
- Non-Linear
Thinking
- This involves
thinking when there is not precise A and B, therefore C
relationship. Sometimes, it is called, "Thinking outside of the
box."
- You have to
use non-linear thinking when:
- You have
imprecise or insufficient information and/or
- You have a
wide range of potential sources of information
and/or
- There is no
precise answer or resolution of a question
and/or
- There are
numerous answers with varied levels of acccuracy,
appropriateness, and/or value.
- Example:
- If you want
to find if bottled water is safer than tap water to
drink,
- There
can be a range of answers to this question depending upon
who supplies the answer, what "local" means, who has done
analyses on the water, and so forth.
- There
may be multiple databases in which you can find the
answer, so:
- You
have to devise criteria for which databases are most
likely to have the information.
- You
may have to research government documents, newspapers,
professional journals, and more.
- You
have to develop strategies for locating that
information.
- You
may have to use a variety of words in different
combinations to find articles and documents that
provide one or another answer.
- Different
pieces of information may be contradictory, so:
- You
have to evaluate the relative appropriateness of the
different original sources of the
information.
- You
have to evaluate the relative quality of the
information content.
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Application
of Your Creativity
- The nature of
creativity
- We are all
creative beings.
- Creativity
does not just involve the visual and performing
arts.
- Getting a
child to eat lunch when we do not have his/her favorite food
around can be a very creative act.
- Creativity can
also be described as, "Thinking outside of the
box."
- Sometimes,
creativity is:
- A stroke of
insight.
- Intuition
- A
vision
- But all of the
time it requires:
- A
foundation of knowledge and experience.
- A
confluence of knowledge and experience.
- An ability
to recognize when it is necessary to obtain appropriate
knowledge.
- Applying your
creativity
- Database
searching is an art as well as an inexact science.
- It requires
that you understand:
- The nature
of the people who write particular types of
articles.
- The nature
of the people who abstract (create brief summaries) of those
articles and index (provide "keywords" or subject "terms" or
"headings" that help guide a searcher to finding those
articles.
- The manner
in which words in articles are organized and tracked
("indexed") in databases.
- The manner
in which we use language to express ideas,
concepts.
- It requires
that you apply the understanding of this information in
combinations (often complex combinations) when
searching.
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Knowledge
- Subject
Knowledge
- All knowledge
is based on a foundation.
- For
example, you all have a basic knowledge of the biology of
human beings. This is enough subject knowledge to start you
on searching in medical databases. What you need is more
information.
- You obtain the
additional subject information to do a search by:
- Looking at
any material (textbook, magazine, dictionary, encyclopedia,
etc.) that might have the words you need to search on the
subject.
- Talking to
the person (the "reference interview") who asked the
question.
- Talking to
experts on the subject.
- Looking at
the "Library of Congress Subject Headings" to find the
appropriate terms.
- Knowledge of
the Requisite Searching Skills
- That is what
this class is about.
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Confidence
& Persistance
- We are all
capable of almost anything we want to do or be.
- We merely need
to:
- Have the
confidence that we can.
- Do those
things necessary (including persist) to achieve our
goal.
- In database
searching, this requires:
- Being
confident that we have or can obtain a foundation of
appropriate knowledge (subject knowledge and searching
skills)
- That we apply
our creativity and non-linear thinking abilities
- Being
persistant in using all of these qualities until we find the
answer.
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