I'm not sure if I agree with one of your points, Roddy. One of the trends
in my teaching in the last year or so is that all sorts of student are
genuinely interested in finding out much more about search construction,
using Boolean and truncation, precision and recall. I've built these kinds
of activities into undergraduate and postgraduate teaching courses, and the
content has been much more stretching than ever before. We've looked at
indexing and search engine performance, in a way that makes me almost hark
back to lectures about the Cranfield tests.
In terms of databases, unless you can guarantee something worthwhile in your
first 10 hits - and at least one thing - the database is useless (in the
eyes of many users). I find some of the general academic databases awful in
this respect but we use one that works well (and is justifiably popular).
If a student is used to using Google - which often delivers good references
very quickly - why bother with anything else? And in my experience, many of
our first years only need (want?) to get the kind of general information
that the Internet is so good at delivering. Your point about
Now, I know that academics and librarians would dispute this point to the
last, but the real answer to which is better - search engines, Internet
gateways, general databases or subject-specific databases - is 'it depends'.
But we do need to consider how you communicate the best places to look in
order of priority. At the heart of all of this is the increase in choice
and access. I remember 10 years ago that if a researcher/student/academic
asked you where to find information on a given topic you could give a clear,
fairly finite list in order of priority. Now, if you add in full-text
delivery, there are so many other places. So where should we go?
Jo Webb
Academic Librarian (Business, Law & Humanities team Leader)
De Montfort University Leicester
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