Select the
appropriate databases to search
- This is simple when you are
searching a local OPAC, a book distributor's datab ase, or a
bibliographic utility; but much more difficult when you are
searching a database utility (such as Dialog) providing multiple
databases.
- Criteria for selecting a
database may include:
- What kind of online
information services do you have available to you?
- Which information services
offer the best selection of databases?
- Which database vendor or
OPAC would have the desired information? (Kind and
timeliness are both important)
- This could also be asked
as, What specific databases or OPACs are
available?
- What formats do the databases
support? (citation, full-text, abstract, graphics, statistics
or other numerical data)
- Which databases or OPACs
provide the best content quality?
- Which offer the most
sophisticated searching capabilities?
- Which offer the easiest
searching capabilities?
- What are the delivery options?
(online download, E-mail, fax, mail, express
services)
- When are the services
available?
- Which offer the best support,
best help services?
- Are there budgetary
constraints that restrain your information service
choice?
- Which information services
offer the most cost-effective pricing?
Developing the
search strategy, including:
- Selecting the Indexes (fields) to
be searched on or else selecting to search "Free Text", which
means searching on ALL of the text in Records
- Selecting the specific terms to
be searched on in those Indexes
- Selecting how they will be
entered and organized in the query.
Conducting the
Search
- Logging on
- Executing the search
- Displaying the intermediate
results of the search(es)
- Refine the search by adding new
terms or recombining search terms for more useful
results.
- Displaying the selected
records
- Have the Records Delivered
Search
Analysis
- Did you get what you
needed?
- Was the search strategy:
- Effective
- Cheap or expensive
- Could you do the same search
better the next time?
- Would you use the same
databases?