Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) students represent a population for whom literature searching is a core practice and a learning outcome for an entry-level course on information searching. How LIS students learn to find information, though, is not completely clear. Many studies have explored undergraduate searching behavior, but…

For the past several years academic libraries have been adopting discovery systems to provide a search experience that reflects user expectations and improves access to electronic resources. University of Houston Libraries has kept pace with this evolving trend by pursuing various discovery options; these include an open-source tool, a federated…

This article examines how finding aids are structured and delivered, considering alternative approaches. It suggests that single-level displays, those that present a single component of a multilevel description to users at a time, have the potential to transform the delivery and display of collection information while improving the user…

Google Scholar is a free service that provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly works and to connect patrons with the resources libraries provide. The researchers in this study analyzed Google Scholar usage data from 2006 for three library tools at San Francisco State University: SFX link resolver, Web Access Management proxy server,…

The year 2011 was the PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) consortium's "rookie season" for the implementation of Primo, the 2010 Discovery Layer 500 race winner. In this article, the authors report on their transition to the cloud within Ex Libris Ltd.'s Primo TotalCare environment: their preparation, the steps involved…

Innovations in search and retrieval have provided librarians with some of their most exciting challenges as a profession. Yet even as new tools flood the academic library commons, direct, person-to-person information counseling is still needed, some would say more than ever. Consequently, it can be very useful to study how users conduct new…

This article describes the Project Lefty, a search system that, at a minimum, adds a layer on top of traditional federated search tools that will make the wait for results more worthwhile for researchers. At best, Project Lefty improves search queries and relevance rankings for web-scale discovery tools to make the results themselves more relevant…

This paper in the form of story discusses a college student's information search process. In this story we see Kuhlthau's information search process: initiation, selection, exploration, formulation, collection, and presentation. Katie is a student who goes in search of information for her class research paper. Katie's class readings, her interest…

As individuals become more and more comfortable mediating all kinds of situations online and through various technologies, their virtual selves increasingly overlap their "real" lives. Posting a "happy birthday!" message on Facebook is as automatic as dropping a card in the mail. E-mailing relevant links to co-workers happens as naturally as…

This paper examines the problems involved in subject retrieval from full-text databases of secondary materials in the humanities. Ten such databases were studied and their search functionality evaluated, focusing on factors such as Boolean operators, document surrogates, limiting by subject area, proximity operators, phrase searching, wildcards,…

Meta-analysis is a technique used in a variety of disciplines to combine and summarize the findings of previous research. One step in the production of a meta-analysis is a thorough literature search for relevant studies. A variety of methods can be used to increase the number of studies that are found. This study examines the extent to which some…

ScanGrants (www.scangrants.com) is a free, online listing of grants, scholarships, and other types of funding in the health sciences. It is basically a launch pad for anyone looking for money to fund medical research or community/public health projects, or to finance their education in various healthcare fields. The goal is to enable researchers,…

Seventeen idea tactics to aid information specialists in furthering a reference search are defined as parts of total search strategies, and are grouped into idea generation and pattern breaking modes. Problems in testing such tactics are discussed. (FM)

Rectangular Venn diagramming for planning searches and for use as worksheets that can be revised during on-line searching is described. (Author)

Reviews Web-search tools available to librarians. Discusses the Clever project, (part of the Computer Science Principles and Methodologies Department at the IBM Almaden Research Center, Silicon Valley, California), an algorithm that finds authoritative sources on the Web; Google technology, based on links between Web pages; Ask Jeeves, a…