Tag Archives: EBSCO

Journal on Library vs Internet.

I performed a search for “data brokers” using Google and a couple of relevant results did float to the top.  I had to sift through a lot of questionable websites because they didn’t have an author or too strong of a bias, which brought their credibility into question. Another reason I doubted their credibility was because they weren’t really backing up their statements with any data or research.   While on the other hand when I used EBSCO there was less skepticism on my part when looking at the results, mainly because a lot of creditable information floated to the top.  While using EBSCO I did refine the search by adding privacy to one of the subject fields to make the search more specific.  I did find about a couple similar articles between the internet search and the library database search but about two of the results had a pay wall while using the internet search engine, the library database search allowed me to bypass a couple of pay walls since it was linked to the school’s account.

A Scholarly Google.

On Monday we used Google Scholar, while using Google scholar I tried a simple search for my topic and it turned up several results that I did not see in a regular Google search.  Google scholar also showed me citations that I in turn used to track down the full articles.  I also used EasyBib to store some of the locations for the articles and journals that I found, EasyBib did also allow me to evaluate some of the websites addresses by telling me whether the website was credible or not.  Google Scholar was nice to use but I still prefer the likes of EBSCO and Lexis Nexis academic, maybe it’s because I have spent a little more time with them but I like the way they let you narrow your search so you can choose from journals, newspaper articles to just court cases.

Searching For The Right Search.

I never knew a topic/word search could be so intricate; all this time I have just been blindly putting in words into the search databases regardless if it was Google or Ebsco.  Badke describes a searcher conducting a broad search and coming up with 4,386 results this searcher ended up sifting through those results to try to find what he was looking for; all I could think of is “That’s me”!  I mean I don’t look through 4,000 results but I have looked through at least 100s of different results until I found what I needed.  After reading chapter 3 of Badke I plan to start using, ‘and’, truncation, nesting and ‘or’; all of which I have never used deliberately while conducting a search.  I have now seen the error in my ways and I plan to turn over a new leaf and to start searching the right way.