Search Statement Research Articles

MEDLINE on CD-ROM: end user searching in a medical school library.

End users at the Medical College of Pennsylvania enjoyed searching CD-ROM versions of MEDLINE and judged such searches "extremely useful." To assess the effectiveness of their searches, a sample of 500 search statements from Compact Cambridge (CC) MEDLINE was examined. A high proportion of search statements (224, or 45 percent) retrieved no documents. Over one-third of search statements (185, or 37 percent) contained at least one error, which usually resulted in zero retrieval for that search statement. Searchers attempting to enter Medical Subject Headings were frequently defeated by the elaborate punctuation requirement of CC MEDLINE. "Missed opportunities" were evident in over three-fourths of search statements. One-on-one instruction and library classes may increase search success, but these measures reach a limited audience. Improvement in the search software itself is needed to help searchers improve the effectiveness of their searches.

Study of strategies used in online searching: 2. Positional Logic — an example of the importance of selecting the right Boolean operator

In online searching, the positional logic capability has made it possible to combine terms together in any order, in a word, fragment, phrase, link, sentence, or citation relationship. The advantages and disadvantages of the strategies that can be employed are reviewed. This Boolean operator capability can permit a reduced number of search statements and should therefore make search time shorter. It is also possible to include the truncation symbol in the search statement, allowing even wider selection on one input. A study was made of alternative ways that a positional statement can be formulated. Searches for material on the topic of ‘micro‐wave integrated circuits’ were carried out with the aim of finding the most economical way of generating the maximum number of relevant items while still keeping the noise level to a minimum. It was found that the ideal method for one database was not valid for another file.