Finding a needle among the 300 haystacks
Or, “If everything’s online now, why is it still difficult to find the information I need?”
If you have never been frustrated when trying to locate some bit of information online or in a library, you won’t be interested in this post. But if you’ve ever looked for the thermal properties of a metal, an elusive fact about literacy rates in sub-Saharan Africa, or simply a misshelved book, you’ve experienced the exasperation: “Why can’t I find it!?”
We live in the age of Google. Vast amounts of information are online, and a quick search turns up thousands or millions of results in less than a second. But when you are looking for a very specific bit of information, it sometimes feels like you are searching for the fabled needle in a haystack. Except that there’s not just one haystack. If you happen to be using the online databases at the University of Oklahoma Libraries – or any large research library – figuring out which of the 300-plus databases to try is like gazing at acre after acre covered with haystacks. Your needle might be in one of them. Or not. Where do you start? With JSTOR? Or maybe Lexis-Nexis?
While you are deciding where to look first, you think to yourself, “why is it so difficult? Why are there 300 different databases? Wouldn’t it be easier if all the information in the world were available in one giant database?”
Well – yes and no. The successes and failures of Google actually point to this answer. Google has done an amazing job of indexing the Web and making it easy to find lots of information quickly. On the other hand, the sheer number of results that Google produces can make it difficult or impossible to get to the one bit of information you need.
Library databases, on the other hand, divide up the information universe into smaller bits. On the one hand, this is useful because you can do a more “targeted” search. If you are looking for the thermal properties of copper, you don’t have to waste your time looking in databases that cover English literature or microbiology. You can limit your search to databases that cover chemistry, engineering, or materials science.
But on the other hand, this “fragments” the information universe and can make searching more difficult. Before you can even do your search, you have to choose a database – and you might not be sure which one(s) would be best.
This is where those library databases offer something that Google cannot. Behind every library database is a librarian ready to help you navigate the information universe. Students who spend 15 or 20 minutes with a librarian before starting on a research project often report that they save hours of wasted effort. Librarians can put you on the right track, link you to the right resources, and help you use the right search terms that will get you to what you need.
Did you know that many of OU’s librarians are subject specialists? If you are doing research in engineering, you might want to meet James Bierman, the Engineering Librarian. If you are a social work major, Molly Strothmann is your librarian. To find out who your librarian is, clickhere. Of course, you can also just stop by the reference desk in Bizzell Memorial Library, give us a call at 405-325-4233, or send an email to librarian@ou.edu.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Karen Antell
Head of Reference & Outreach Services, OU Libraries
P.S. I leave you with a bit a humor from the category “It’s funny because it’s true.”
http://elektrodna.com/post/404349830/life-before-google-a-short-story-doggie-i-just
No comments:
Post a Comment