ScienceDirect

This week I delved into the world of science and medical databases. I chose ScienceDirect to evaluate mainly because of the look of its interface. With inviting green colors and a bubbly, sans-serif logo font, it seemed to exude a user-friendly experience. It certainly seemed more inviting at first glance than the stale, academic, and intimidating-looking PubMed, (of course, that is this author's opinion; perhaps librarians in medical settings would disagree with me).

For this week's theme, I chose to focus on finding information about how people with disabilities access online health information and barriers they might face in the process. I used the following search strategy:

 
As you can see from the above screenshot,  I was using the "Expert Search" feature. I found that "Advanced Search" was actually fairly limiting, containing only two search boxes where I wanted to add multiple search facets. To ensure currency, I only searched for articles published within the last four years. I  modified the search to look within the subject field of "Medicine and Dentistry." Lastly, I decided that I only wanted articles from journals rather than book chapters, so I selected that option as well.

Even with all of the refining I did, my search still yielded an impressive 795 results! I examined the first few pages and found them filled with relevant results, so I elected not to limit my search further and concluded that this was likely a common topic in medical journals.

Here are some examples of the types of articles I received from my first page of results:

All of the results above appeared to be related in some way to the topic I was searching about, but the first result seemed especially relevant:

What did I learn this week?

Content:

As far as article content is concerned, I learned that despite legal obligations otherwise, many health information websites still possess a low level of accessibility. A study by Liang, et al. (2011), found that individuals who are newly diagnosed with a disabling illness are more likely to seek any information about their condition that they can find, where chronic individuals tend to seek more specific information. The authors also found that as an illness progresses and becomes more debilitating, individuals are more anxious about the information seeking process. Naturally, as mobility or function decreases, patrons prefer websites that are more accommodating or easier to use; however, when obtaining health information is viewed as paramount, patrons will often strive to get the information at any cost despite the difficulty level of doing so. Their findings suggest that usability should be re-evaluated for health information websites and should be modified to meet the needs of individuals with mobility issues and progressive, disabling illnesses.

Searching:

As far as the use of ScienceDirect is concerned, this week I learned about browsing and limiting via a subject area. I wish more databases would allow a user to browse by subjects like this one does. There are so many areas under the umbrella of science! I can easily see potential overlapping of search terms in multiple subject areas. By limiting a search to a specific sub-genre (such as dentistry, medicine, or psychology,) you can ensure that the terms you are using are relative to the field you would like to search in, rather than another branch of science. For example, searching for information about telomeres in medicine may bring up different types of articles than searching for information about telomeres in Biology.

Reflections:

Would I use ScienceDirect again?

All-in-all ScienceDirect seems like a fairly standard database. It functions similarly to many of the other databases I have already covered in this blog. Honestly, though, the advertising was very irritating and distracting. Take a look at my first screenshot. Can you see ads at the top and in the right-hand side bar?  These advertisements follow you on every page you visit. It seems that the ads are devoted to educational products, but it still makes the database appear unprofessional and amateur. When I look back on all of the other professional databases I have used in my educational career, I cannot recall another one that has used advertisements. It is not as if Elsevier is a small organization, either. They are a vendor for quite a few different databases and I can recall using their other products without the presence of annoying advertising (Scopus is one example). If these distractions were removed, I could see myself using this database on a regular basis.

Ideas for future searches

Look at all of those results... 795 of them! Yes, many of them were relevant. However, it still makes me wonder whether I am thinking too broadly about my topic. Perhaps I should focus on a particular type of disability for future searches to obtain more focused results. Someone with a neurological condition may have different needs or barriers to information than someone with low vision. Would narrowing my search mean finding more targeted information or would it mean coming up empty? Would this strategy only work in a database that deals with medicine? I know one of the reasons I had so many results with ScienceDirect is that quite a few of the articles addressed very specific types of disabilities rather than lumping them all together in one study group. Perhaps this is something to consider for my next search?

What do you think? What considerations should a Librarian make when narrowing their topic? How much limiting is too much? Maybe next time I will try a pearl growing approach instead!

As always, I would love to hear your feedback. Feel free to drop me a line!

- Crystal

Reference:

Liang, Huigang, Yajiong Xue, and Susan K. Chase. "Online Health Information Seeking by People with Physical Disabilities Due to Neurological Conditions." International Journal of Medical Informatics, 80 no. 11: 745-753.

PsychInfo

This week I looked into PsychInfo, an EbscoHost database with a thesaurus and extensive search help features. As the name suggests, PsychInfo's content is focused around the field of Psychology. At first glance it became apparent that the database utilized a lot of indexing and tagging. I came to the conclusion that knowing the exact terms a particular subject is classified under would be extremely helpful in obtaining accurate results. After deciding on the subject of people with disabilities and their feelings about the information finding process, I did a thesaurus search for some of these words to find out if different terms were used within the database. I found the following (circled) terms related to the subject I was searching for:

Based on the terms I found, I decided to use the word "attitude" in addition to the words "feeling and emotion" and I decided to replace "information finding process" with PsychInfo's suggestion of "information seeking." As with my search for JSTOR, I decided to use truncation for disabilit* to catch entries related to both the singular and plural version of the word. My decided-upon strategy looked like this:

The search using the above terms yielded 10 results. All but the eighth and ninth results were related to the topic that I was looking for. Here's a good example of the results that I received:

Unfortunately, after examining these articles, I found that most of them did not have full-text articles available. How frustrating! After limiting it to just full-text articles, it limited the number of results significantly to only 3 hits. The most accurate of these is represented below:

What did I learn this week?

Content:

As far as content goes, I learned about evaluating the information needs of the caregivers and family members of people with disabilities and their attitudes toward information finding. Thus far, I have been focused on the needs of patrons with disabilities and I had not stopped to consider the needs of others around them and what kind of barriers they might face in obtaining information.

A study by Parette, et al. (2010)  designed to determine the attitudes of caregivers toward information seeking found that "participants reported that they would have liked to (a) get information about web sites that could help their child and family; (b) have one-stop shopping that includes all the information they need; (c) get information about the quality of the websites they use; and (d) have better organization of the content on the web sites they are using. Participants also described their desire to have discussion groups that share similar concerns and receive training to more effectively use their computer. Participants indicated.. a lack of accessibility to a 'person' who can answer questions." I think that these findings are incredibly important for reference librarians to consider. More than half of the participants in the study (57%) reported using the public library to conduct research, but yet many of them also felt they did not have anyone to help answer their questions. Does this indicate a failure on the part of reference librarians to advertise their services? Should more outreach be considered for caregivers and for individuals with disabilities in the community? Is there more that I could be doing as a (hopefully) future reference librarian to help ensure that these information needs are met, even if it just means pointing the caregiver in the direction of a reputable website? How can I design programs or training opportunities to better support the needs of caregivers of individuals with disabilities? It gives me a lot of food for thought in my future profession of choice.

Searching:

I also learned several things about searching PsychInfo this week. First, I learned the importance of using suggested terms, search helps, and thesauri in indexed databases. I think that my search would not have gone as smoothly as it did without my attempts to find the correct terminology before developing my search strategy. Interestingly enough, through experimentation I found that the database could suggest search terms from the search page. This eliminated the need of going to the thesaurus page. All I had to do was click the "Suggest Subject Terms" box and voila! a list of like, controlled terms was generated.

Second, I learned that there are many items available on this database that are not full-text and do not have any form of outside linking to the articles. I was disappointed several times when I would click on a relevant article only to find that the entry included very little information or the document itself was not available. When searching databases like these, I have to remember to select the "full-text only" box! Otherwise, I will spend far too much time looking through links and citation pages to determine if they have the content I need.

Reflections:

Would I use PsychInfo again? 

 Yes, I think that I would use PsychInfo again if I had a psychology-related question from a patron. It was fairly straight forward to use and all of the search assistance was so helpful! Even without an extensive background in the field, I feel like I could confidently use this database because the thesaurus would give me access to jargon used in that field that I might not otherwise be aware of. Plus, I really liked all of the advanced search options available including the age groups of the study participants, intended audiences for the article, methodologies used in the study, and much, much more. These options allowed me to fine-tune and refine searching to a degree that many other databases just don't offer. Oh.. and did I mention how much I love tagging? A simple click meant that I could find other articles about that exact same subject. I suppose that I have been spoiled by EbscoHost. When I see another database without their extensive level of tagging, I often find myself disappointed!


Ideas for future searches

Honestly, I am not sure that I feel my search this week was a success. Perhaps the topic I chose was too narrow. Maybe I needed to broaden my topic and look at the psychological factors surrounding information seeking in general or the emotions and feelings that come with being diagnosed with an illness or disability instead of attempting to address all three topics at once. Perhaps this is what I need to focus on for my future searches - how to hit that sweet spot between too broad and too narrow of a topic.

Do you have any tips for finding a good middle ground? Did anything in my search this week spark your interest? As always I would love to hear from you! Feel free to drop me a line or post a comment!

- Crystal


Reference:

Parette, Howard P., Hedda Meaden, Sharon Doubet, and Jackie Hess. “Supporting Families of Young Children with Disabilities Using Technology.” Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities 45, no. 4 (2010): 552-565.

JSTOR

This week I took a look at the searching capabilities and contents of JSTOR, a digital library owned by ITHAKA. I wanted to see if I could find any information about people with disabilities and equal access to information, (specifically within the realm of libraries).

My search involved the following terms (Boolean terms capitalized for effect): individuals OR people OR patrons AND disabilit* AND accessibility. I included several terms that I thought might be used interchangeably within the texts to represent human beings (individuals, patrons, people).  I also used a wildcard on the term disabilit* so that my search would cast a wider net and include both "disability" and "disabilities."

Notice that within my search, I chose to only include content that I was able to access from within the database. I limited my materials to books and articles and chose to only search for items published within the last three years. What was not reflected in the above screenshot is that I also chose to limit my subject area to "Library Science" journals only.

The search itself yielded 4 hits. This was not exactly the wealth of information I was hoping for, but the few that did result were relevant to my search topic. Below are the four articles that resulted from my search.

























What did I learn this week?

Content:

Content-wise, I learned that many individuals with disabilities are not turning to their local libraries for services and are instead seeking help from state agencies to meet their needs (in my home state this agency is known as the Utah State Library for the Blind and Disabled: http://blindlibrary.utah.gov/). Those who do not qualify for state services often fall through the cracks. According to Lewis (2013), most patrons with disabilities are simply unaware that their public library system has a variety of accessible technologies available for use. I found it shocking that so many patrons did not even possess library cards. To me, this seems to indicate that librarians (myself included) need to focus more on outreach campaigns to ensure that the public is aware of the types of services that their local library provides. Additionally, Lewis mentioned that staff training may be an issue. She described instances where staff members were instructed to forward all patrons with visual impairments to state agencies without first finding out what their needs were and if they could be met within the library. These are definitely areas that I need to be aware of when I begin my career to ensure that people with disabilities feel comfortable in the library and feel that their needs can be adequately met. Otherwise, my library might be missing out on an entire segment of the population that wants and deserves equitable access to information!

Searching:

As far as JSTOR is concerned, I learned that I could limit content to specific subject areas. I love this feature and I really wish that more database vendors would implement it. This feature was such a time saver for finding relevant information (accessibility, for example, can also show up in the subject area of Architecture, but that was not necessarily what I was looking for in this search).

Reflections:

Would I use JSTOR again?

Possibly, but it likely would not be my first choice for researching Library Science topics. There are only 24 books and journals listed that are related to Library Science. This seems to one of the smallest collections among all of the other subject areas. Simply put, there are other databases I prefer to use that focus specifically on Library Science topics and include many of the same journals.

Overall, I found JSTOR to be very easy to use. I have a slight advantage in that this is my second course in information retrieval (Thanks Dr. Akin. I learned so much last semester!) and I already have somewhat of a foundational knowledge in how to navigate databases and narrow searches. I did not find using JSTOR to be an unfamiliar or overwhelming experience. In fact, the interface seemed similar to many of the other databases I have spent time with, albeit with a few nice extras like the subject area limiter.

One thing I did not like was that some of the content seemed hidden behind a "pay wall" of sorts. Fortunately, you can set your search to only include items you have access to so you will never have to see those dreaded "X" icons only to find that you have selected an article that is not available in full text. However, it still seems odd that some of the content is limited.

I also wish that JSTOR had some sort of tagging system for their articles. If I had the ability to see a list of common terms/phrases used in one of the relevant articles, perhaps I could have developed a follow-up strategy that provided more results.


Ideas for future searches

I think finding and trying other terms/synonyms may lead more fruitful searches. For example, perhaps I could use the words "universal design" instead or in addition to "accessibility"? I need to do some research and better familiarize myself with trends or common terms used within this subject area.

Hope you enjoyed my first search post! I would love to hear your questions, comments, or any technique suggestions you have for future searches!


- Crystal


Reference:

Lewis, Jill. 2013. "Information Equality for Individuals with Disabilities: Does it Exist?" The Library Quarterly 83:229-35 . Accessed Sept. 15, 2014. doi:10.1086/670697.

Welcome!

Hello and thank you for viewing my blog! I am a library science student attending Texas Woman's University and a particular research interest of mine is how librarians can better connect individuals with disabilities to the information they are seeking. 

This blog was created as a semester-long project for a class entitled "Online Information Retrieval." The project will involve searches from a variety of databases. The posts themselves will provide a brief evaluation of the database and will describe a searching strategy. Each search will center on the main theme of breaking down barriers to information for people with disabilities. I strongly believe that this knowledge and understanding will improve my ability to serve patrons within my system.

I hope that you enjoy my blog! Feel free to contact me or to comment about anything you found interesting or with any information you would like to share. I look forward to hearing from you!

- Crystal