Page 113 - DLIS405_INFORMATION_STORAGE_AND_RETRIEVAL

Information Storage and Retrieval

Notes One of the most beneficial things you can do to improve your keyword searching results is to plan
out your search. Here’s how: Write down the keywords or search terms you plan to use.

Brainstorm possible synonyms for your search terms (e.g., community organizing
vs. grassroots movements), and be sure to incorporate those into your search.
Identify terms that are most specific to the concepts that you’re researching (e.g., substance abuse
vs. alcoholism).
When you find relevant articles, examine them for potential (new) keywords.
Keep notes on what worked – and what didn’t – so you don’t repeat the same searches over and
over again.
Keyword searching ignores context unless we tell it otherwise. Thus keyword searching works well
if you’re using very specific terminology, if you want to search full text, or if you just want to
perform a broad search on a topic. It can also work well if you use it to construct complex search
strings;
Top Search Mistakes – Database Mismatch
The Walden librarians are often asked “what are the most common mistakes people make when
searching?”
Well, that’s a surprisingly hard question to answer!
Library databases are complicated, there are many different types of resources, and the internet has
very little structure. There are lots of places where things can go wrong. So, we’re starting a series
here on the blog that will look at some of the common problems searchers face, and how you can
solve them.
Today we’ll talk about database mismatch.
This is when the information you need exists, but you aren’t in the right spot to find it. With over 60
databases in the Walden Library, this can happen easily and often. It even happens to librarians
(almost daily).
So, how do you make sure you’re picking the right database?

Write down the keywords or search terms.

Become familiar with the databases in your subject area. Read through the descriptions and take a
few minutes to explore each database. Does it have popular resources or scholarly ones? Both?
Does it have books, which provide more general information, or articles, which cover very specific
topics? Is it a large database or a relatively small one? Does it have specialized content, such as
reviews, videos, or SWOT analyses? If you have a basic understanding of what’s available to you,
you’ll be better at picking a database the next time you need to use one.
Decide if your topic is cross-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary. Some topics are discussed by
researchers in different fields. You may need to try databases from other fields or try a search in a
multidisciplinary database such as Academic Search Premier or ProQuest Central.
Try more than one database. Many subject areas have several databases that contain similar content.
It’s almost impossible to know which one is better for your particular research topic until you try
them. And you may find that you need articles from several different databases. You can do the
same search (or similar searches) in several different databases; librarians do this all the time!

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