Unpacking your literature search toolbox: on search styles and tactics

作者：Andrew Booth · 发表于：Health Information & Libraries Journal · 年份：2008 · DOI：10.1111/j.1471-1842.2008.00825.x · 被引用次数：201 · 研究领域：Information Retrieval and Search Behavior、Health Sciences Research and Education、Data Quality and Management

Andrew Booth ‘Building Blocks’, ‘Berry Picking’ and ‘Successive Fractions’—although these sound like activities from a kindergarten picnic, in fact, they represent potential tools from your literature search toolbox. Is it not surprising therefore that, with information retrieval such an important feature of the health information professional's repertoire, we pay little attention to the conceptual level of the literature search process? In other words most librarians simply engage in literature searching at a pragmatic ‘get the job done’ level. Does it matter whether information professionals can describe these search tactics and assign a label to them? Well, let us consider if you were visited by an allegedly qualified carpenter who asks you to pass ‘that thingummyjig with a head and a claw at the end’ or that ‘thingy with the jagged teeth’. It would hardly inspire you with confidence in their ability, wouldn't it? Furthermore, as I have argued elsewhere, it is engagement with the evidence base—that corpus of professional knowledge—that distinguishes the professional from the practitioner. The analogy is between the surgeon and the barber: Whereas the art of the barber has remained essentially unchanged over many millennia, the profession of the surgeon continues to evolve, stimulated by technical improvements and technological innovation. Wherein lies the difference between these two activities? Is it not in the building up and transmission of an evolving body of knowledge...