Unpacking your literature search toolbox: on search styles and tactics
Unpacking your literature search toolbox: on search styles and tactics
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1471-1842.2008.00825.x
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发表时间：
2008-12-01
影响因子：
3.8
通讯作者：
Booth, Andrew
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Booth, Andrew
“积木”、“采摘浆果”和“逐次分数”——虽然这些听起来像是幼儿园野餐的活动，但实际上，它们代表了你的文献搜索工具箱中的潜在工具。因此，当信息检索成为卫生信息专业人员技能的重要特征时，我们很少关注文献检索过程的概念层面，这难道不奇怪吗？换句话说，大多数图书管理员只是在务实的“完成工作”水平上进行文献搜索。信息专业人员是否能够描述这些搜索策略并给它们贴上标签重要吗？好吧，让我们考虑一下，如果你被一个所谓的合格木匠拜访，他要求你通过“那个有头有爪的东西”或“那个有锯齿状牙齿的东西”。这很难让你对他们的能力产生信心，不是吗？此外，正如我在其他地方所说的那样，与证据基础（专业知识的语料库）的接触将专业人士与实践者区分开来。外科医生和理发师之间的类比是：几千年来，理发师的艺术基本上保持不变，而外科医生的职业则在技术进步和技术创新的刺激下不断发展。这两种活动的区别在哪里？它不是在不断发展的知识体系的建立和传播中吗？1
‘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? 1