Cheryl Knott - Find the Information You Need!: Resources and Techniques for Making Decisions, Solving Problems, and Answering Questions

Find the Information You Need!

Editorial Advisory Board

C. Sean Burns, PhD

Assistant Professor

School of Information Science

College of Communication and Information

University of Kentucky

Ericka J. Patillo

Lecturer

School of Information and Library Science

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Julie Ann Winkelstein, MLIS, PhD

Writer, Teacher, and Library Advocate

Find the Information You Need!

Resources and Techniques for Making Decisions, Solving Problems, and Answering Questions

Cheryl Knott

Rowman & Littlefield

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright 2016 by Cheryl Knott

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Knott, Cheryl, 1954- author.

Title: Find the information you need! : resources and techniques for making decisions, solving problems, and answering questions / Cheryl Knott.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2016] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015039254| ISBN 9781442262478 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442262485 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442262492 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Electronic information resource searching. | Internet searching. | Information resourcesEvaluation.

Classification: LCC ZA4060 .K586 2016 | DDC 025.04dc23LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039254

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments

After teaching a graduate online searching course for years, I began teaching one for undergraduates. Unlike for the graduate course, which had a few great textbooks to choose from, the undergraduate market lacked a user-friendly guide that featured hands-on exercises, clear instruction, and sophisticated but easy-to-learn techniques. Then one day, Rowman & Littlefield executive editor Charles Harmon asked me if I might have an idea for a book. That idea became this book, and I am grateful to Charles for prompting me to go ahead and create the guide I had assumed (and hoped) someone else was in the process of writing. Charles offered good advice and encouragement and helped me persist to the end. I also appreciate the help of assistant editor Robert Hayunga as did production editor Andrew Yoder. Both Charles and Robert kindly and patiently answered my many questions about manuscript preparation.

One of the greatest joys for me on this project has been the opportunity to work with the three-member editorial board for the book: C. Sean Burns, PhD, assistant professor, School of Information Science, College of Communication and Information, University of Kentucky; Ericka J. Patillo, lecturer, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Julie Ann Winkelstein, MLIS, PhD, a writer, teacher, and library advocate. Sean, Ericka, and Julie provided comments, suggestions, corrections, and edits that strengthened the book immeasurably. If this text is intelligible and useful, much of the credit goes to them. And if there are errors, they are mine, all mine.

Key points in the text are illustrated with screenshots from various commercial databases, and I am grateful to have received permission to use images from Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.; EBSCO Industries, Inc.; and Newsbank, Inc. The screenshots and their contents from ABI/Inform Complete and Statistical Insight are published with permission of ProQuest . My thanks go to these corporations and to the other entities, named in the captions, that allowed me to include images from their websites.

Finally, I wish to thank the countless graduate and undergraduate students who have taken my various online searching courses. Their questions, their inquisitiveness, and their dedication to finding the information they need have taught me a great deal about information discovery, and about life in general.

Introduction:Dont Google That, Do This

Find the Information You Need! is designed for the person who suspects that Google and Facebook and the random clerk at the bookstore arent always giving them the best information for their specific needs. Created for anyone who wants to understand how to select better information resources, deploy smarter search strategies, and use results more effectively, Find the Information You Need! provides

• search exercises on a variety of topics to try yourself;
• coverage of the different types of information resources available, including commercial databases, digital libraries, and open-access repositories;
• clear explanations of search techniques and when and how to use them; and
• helpful advice about evaluating and organizing search results.

This guide to the fundamentals of information discovery can be used as a textbook in undergraduate and graduate online searching courses and as a manual for anyone who wants to move beyond keyword searching on the web. No existing book offers what Find the Information You Need! does: a plain-language text that teaches the layperson what information brokers, competitive intelligence professionals, and librarians know about finding authoritative information.

Whether you need to make a decision, solve a problem, answer a question, or write a research report, Find the Information You Need! can help by introducing you to the resources, techniques, and practices that professional information searchers use every day. Find the Information You Need! will teach you what and how to find the publications and facts that will help you

• decide where to locate your business;
• choose which charities deserve your donations;
• understand what researchers think about issues such as the connection between video games and violent behavior;
• learn whether physical activity might help you get off prescription medications;
• discover what music eighteenth-century Americans liked to dance to, and where to find that music now; and
• bunches of other topics.

Find the Information You Need! can be used by high school and undergraduate students undertaking research assignments. It treats your assignment as a quest for information that anyone in the real world of business, government, the sciences, journalism, and other fields might undertake. Consequently, anyone with a serious need for information can benefit from using the techniques described in this book. Find the Information You Need! can even help you win bets at your local bar: worlds tallest building, oldest person, ugliest dog? The answer from the most up-to-date, authoritative source wins!

If youve come this far, chances are you have mastered Google search but have a nagging feeling you might be missing something. You may be missing huge amounts of information, for two reasons. First, most current publications are copyrighted and not freely available, so search engines cant retrieve them from behind paywalls unless you or an institution youre affiliated with pays. Second, search engines are designed to learn your interests and preferences and favor those in your results. You end up in what Internet activist Eli Pariser calls a filter bubble that tends not to introduce you to new ideas or sources. In addition to missing out on information that might be useful, you may be giving away more data than youre getting back, since most search engines track your clicks and share your queries and movements with other companies and the federal government.