#Toolbox for pages review professional#

Of course, more important than placing an appropriate label on a specific search tactic is judicious selection and use of such techniques to match a corresponding information need. The analogy is between the surgeon and the barber:

#Toolbox for pages review professional#

It would hardly inspire you with confidence in their ability, wouldn't it?įurthermore, as I have argued elsewhere, it is engagement with the evidence base-that corpus of professional knowledge-that distinguishes the professional from the practitioner. Does it matter whether information professionals can describe these search tactics and assign a label to them? Well, let us consider if you were visited by an allegedly qualified carpenter who asks you to pass ‘that thingummyjig with a head and a claw at the end’ or that ‘thingy with the jagged teeth’.

Is it not surprising therefore that, with information retrieval such an important feature of the health information professional's repertoire, we pay little attention to the conceptual level of the literature search process? In other words most librarians simply engage in literature searching at a pragmatic ‘get the job done’ level. ‘Building Blocks’, ‘Berry Picking’ and ‘Successive Fractions’-although these sound like activities from a kindergarten picnic, in fact, they represent potential tools from your literature search toolbox. Unpacking your literature search toolbox: on search styles and tactics