Hi Julie et al,
I have to weigh in.

I don't disagree with the importance of handsearching, but isn't much of
this overkill except for a small % of clinical questions? What happens to
the notion of scanning for relevance during even targeted handsearching -
in lieu of relying on maximum sensitivity filters/ keywords in our
searching - when everything is electronic only? 

Perhaps there is a greater role for librarians and information specialists
around helping clinicians use more descriptive language in article titles
and abstracts (or, leverage clinician-directed tagging) to ensure that
online retrieval methods suffice for most clinical questions. (Jessie
McGowan in Canada has spoken about this.) For SRs and clinical trials,
grants, sure - we can knock ourselves out, but the time is not far off
where handsearching will be impracticable.

cheers


Dean Giustini
UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian
Vancouver General Hospital (700 W. 10th)
blogfolio <weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/googlescholar>
move website: www.library.ubc.ca/bmb/new_bmb/
<604-875-4505> MSN chat: <[log in to unmask]>

On Wed, 19 Apr 2006, Julie Glanville wrote:

> Dear Adrian, When I think about database searches I see them as relatively
> simple filters trying to capture, in a pragmatic and sometimes unnaturally
> structured way, concepts expressed in records of research that may not be
> well expressed nor used consistently. Search strategies are relatively
> simple devices designed to catch something complex. Being relatively simple,
> database search strategies may fail to retrieve all relevant records in a
> database for a variety of reasons:
> 
> 1. The key words used in the strategy may not capture all the concepts
> required (as expressed by authors in titles and abstracts) 
> 2. the limited words available to and used by the authors for a database
> record (title and abstract terms) may not adequately describe the research
> they conducted, or all aspects of the research, even though the full
> research paper itself may contain the concepts in which the searcher is
> interested.
> 3. the quality of the indexing applied by the database of interest may not
> capture all the aspects of the research we want to find, or may not be
> applied consistently.
> 
> So even very thorough strategies with lots of synonyms, using both textwords
> and indexing, may miss highly relevant studies because of one or more of
> these factors. There are many research papers recorded on the Cochrane
> Methodology Register which describe the mismatch between searching and
> available studies retrieved.
> 
> With handsearching you have so much more to work with - you have a whole
> article to scan to look for relevance and you are not approaching it with an
> inevitably limited set of keywords - you are using all your knowledge of the
> topic to assess the relevance of much detailed material, rather than hoping
> a (possibly large) set of carefully chosen keywords will coincide with the
> terms that are available to be searched in database records. 
> 
> Having said that, database searches are essential because project resources
> do not usually allow the luxury of lots of handsearching vast numbers of
> journals. The massive handsearching exercise that the Cochrane Collaboration
> undertakes to find RCTs in journals to feed into the CENTRAL database is an
> indication of how much work is involved to identify records that meet just
> one concept.
> 
> Databases allow us to do reasonably thorough searches of millions of records
> while being aware of the potential limitations of what we can claim.
> 
> Handsearching has to be carefully targeted - perhaps at high yielding
> journals (identified from database searches) in the hope of finding more
> records than the database search revealed or in highly relevant journals
> unindexed on major databases to pick up studies that will not otherwise be
> found by database searches. 
> 
> The challenge and the enjoyment for searchers can be trying to find a
> pragmatic mix of approaches to identify as much relevant research evidence
> to answer a specific question, within the resources available. An integral
> part of this approach to me seems to be an element of unavoidable redundancy
> - searching a range of databases because of the added retrieval value
> different indexing and search interfaces may offer, and handsearching as
> well as database searching because both  approaches can offer results. 
> 
> Regards
> Julie
> 
> Julie Glanville
> Associate Director
> Centre for Reviews and Dissemination
> University of York
> York
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Evidence based health (EBH)
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Adrian Sayers
> Sent: 19 April 2006 10:19
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Searching the literature - Electronic vs Hand
> 
> 
> Hi interesting point on hand searching, I would love to hear more points of
> view on this.
> 
> I would have to say in a lot of cases hand searching is a logistical
> nightmare, and actually where do you hand search? 
> 
> I think you only know where to hand search after finishing a good electronic
> search, which then highlights the hotspots.
> 
> In addition a hand search of a large journal (BMJ, NEJM, LANCET etc etc.)
> would take an extraordinary length of time, and do you only hand search
> journals which you know aren't indexed. If a journal is indexed, what's the
> point in hand searching articles that your keywords don't appear in?
> 
> On reviews similar to the one I am currently working on I have seen
> individuals state that hand searching was an effective way to find articles
> that would otherwise have been missed by electronic searching. Does this not
> actually mean my electronic search strategy was not effective?
> 
> Surely the days of hand searching are numbered. The more research is
> published the more we will need to devise better ways of searching the
> literature electronically. By hand searching are we not just covering up our
> limitations in electronic searching?
> 
> I pose some of these questions to entice debate.
> 
> 
> Adrian
> 
> 
> 
> ____________________________________
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> Adrian Sayers
> Systematic Reviewer
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