My seven search criteria-search engine technology

A few years ago, before I made a bibliography guide for search beginners for the first time, I had to calm down and think about what is the simplest and most important thing I can teach them? What do our professional searchers know, and these students don't understand? What courses are the reasons for the difference between finding and not finding and what they need to learn? There were four words coming into my mind. I wrote them on a piece of paper in my office: My four search criteria. In the past few years, I have added some content on this basis. However, my colleagues and I still understand and practice them clearly. In my opinion, this is the difference between our professional searchers and common users.

I did not invent these rules, but I just made them systematic and textual. Text-based organization-another thing that a professional searcher does when receiving problems from people.

Criterion 1: Where information should be stored
(Rule One: Go Where It Is)
Ordinary people may think that people like us who are good at searching must be aware of some tips for using search engines. What we actually know is the fact that many problems cannot be solved using search engines, because there is no information on the Internet. Maybe the answer is hidden in a Harper's published in 1935, or in a New York Times published in 1865, it may be either in a book that compares medical insurance management policies of different European countries, in an unpublished paper, or in a property rights market survey conducted by Bao Shijie (P & G, or it may be stored in the records of a Senate hearing in 1965.


When anyone asks us a question, whether or not we are familiar with this field, the first thing we do is to search for the information accumulated in our minds. When we say "let's try online medical literature Analysis and Retrieval system (MEDLINE)", we have evaluated user needs (about special treatments in a certain medical environment) and knowledge levels (medical professors or students), and determine where information is most likely to meet their needs (articles in the medical literature ).


No matter what the question is, we will go through the same information geographic Chart Search and validation process: when asked about the copy of the art, we will search for the Encyclopedia of Art or the Internet; when asked about what we can buy for $1 in 1966, we will search for Historical Statistics in the United States, Statistical summary, or local newspaper ads in 1966. Different tools can retrieve different information, and library members' skills are just to understand which tool can best complete which task.


When a Librarians asked me about the original information about Delaware watershed, my first response was:
· Army Corps of Engineers ).