5 Searching for Information is Both an Art and a Science

Throughout my career as an information professional — more commonly known as a “librarian” — I’ve had to answer questions about finding information, citing information, determining if it’s a reliable resource, and helping make assessments about the quality of information. For example, I teach students studying health professions how to locate reliable and high-quality information they will need to make diagnoses and to determine best treatment options for patients in their future careers.

As a graduate student, I learned how to search for information from a librarian. She taught me that searching was both an art and a science. In other words, searching for information is not exact in nature but there is a process. Like science there are principles and methodologies to follow. However, there are also other components to searching for information that do not follow a strict method. When I teach students how to search effectively, I show them the step-by-step process for locating primary information, like a scientific methodology. For example, how to use controlled vocabulary in a database to locate articles, or how to use a database to find recent journal articles. These processes have a scientific approach. There is a method to follow to use the controlled vocabulary terms to develop and conduct a search. I also show them where to locate reliable resources, beginning with the UA Health Sciences Library website. I reassure students that it is okay to use Google as a starting place, as long as you make sure you thoughtfully evaluate the sources of information you find.

Practicing honesty and integrity is an ethical principle in the process of science. I’ve helped students navigate through ethical issues, such as how to use and reuse information properly. For example, students need to take care to avoid plagiarizing the works of others, even if it is not intentional, and to properly credit the creators of the information they use. Using work that is not your own without attribution is wrong and unethical. Citing references and sources is an important part of building on the work of others. Finding supporting evidence to answer your research question is imperative, but so is ensuring that the information is accurately cited and referenced in your work.

Copyright is also important to consider: can you determine if the information you’re using is being shared with the permission of the creator(s), and do you have the right to reuse it in your own work? Can it be copied and shared with a wider audience? For example, if you have an article that was written by someone else and want to share it with 12 other people, do you need permission to do so? Copyright can be a challenging subject, but to understand the basics of what is allowable for you to use as a student is important.

But how do we process all that information? I recall when doing a search about the impact of pharmacists on the quality of life outcome in patients, I reviewed 10 pages of search results. It was necessary to take the time to carefully review the search results for this particular project since so many things can fall into the category of “quality of life.” But conducting such large searches can be overwhelming, and I was coming across search results that I started seeing over and over. This is the art of searching for information: understanding and knowing when to stop is important. You have to rely on your ability to recognize what is important. It’s important to critically evaluate the information at hand and to be able to synthesize and learn from it.

Learning to search as a graduate student was intimidating. There was so much information out there, and so many ways to locate it — it was difficult to get started. What is even more difficult is knowing when to stop searching and ask myself, “did I find everything I was looking for?” How would I know when to stop searching and how to evaluate information to determine the quality? This is the art of searching. Like art, how do you know when your creation is complete (when to stop searching)? Are you happy with the final creation (the results of your search )?  In this process, it may take multiple textwords or multiple search attempts to find what you’re looking for, such as in my previous example of locating quality of life outcomes in patients: what is deemed “quality of life”? It could be a number of things, such as walking, eating, riding a bike without assistance, to target body mass index in patients. It would take multiple attempts and several textwords to locate a number of items that would be considered “quality of life” and it would take creative approaches to develop multiple search strategies to find that information.

I’ve helped students evaluate the information they find by asking them to consider: where did the source come from? Is it an authoritative resource? Can you identify the author and are they credible? Many times information found online may not have an author, or the author’s identity is difficult to determine. For example, blogs and wikis may contain information from multiple unknown authors. It is up to the researcher to determine if that information is credible or not — but making that kind of assessment can be difficult. Perhaps the author is not a credible source and perhaps they didn’t include their name in the work.

I’ve been a librarian for many years now and I get difficult questions from students and faculty. Therefore, I find the reliable resources, locate an authoritative author, cite where I got my information from, and share that information, knowing I have used that information ethically. My process continues to grow as I learn new searching strategies and utilize new resources. Searching for information can be challenging. However, it helps to remember that searching is not exact in nature. As a librarian I want to share with students that searching is both an art and a science.

Works Cited

Li, Lili. Scholarly Information Discovery in the Networked Academic Learning Environment. Oxfordshire, Chandos Publishing, 2014.

About the author

name: Jennifer Martin

Jennifer is a librarian at the Health Science Library where she helps students find information in the health sciences, in particular pharmacy. When she’s not librarying, she enjoys cooking, working out, being a mom, and on occasion a wannabe baker who makes delicious scones and sourdough breads in her spare time.