Sunday, November 28, 2010

Dipping my virtual toes into the search pool.

I thought I'd throw a short update out here and talk about my initial search experiences.

I thought I would start by using the database ERIC through EBSCO.

My initial search had 3 concepts. Web 2.0, enhancement and business. No other restrictions. Hoping for a glut of results that I could pare down.  Instead I got....1 result. Ouch.

So I decided to change my 2nd concept to performance with everything else the same.  Again 1 result.  Oh boy, this is going to be fun!

After I finished moping I decided to try 2 concepts. Again with Web 2.0 but using "business performance" (with parenthesis) and the second.  This brought me 23 results with several of those looking very promising!

I noticed that severalresults had a descriptor called "knowledge management". Which is actually a subject very relevant to what I want to cover in my research. So I changed the 2nd concept back to business and added "knowledge management" as a 3rd concept.  3 results and only 2 of those seemed promising.

Hmm, lets try dropping the business concept and just try Web 2.0 and "knowledge management".  10 results and after a brief review 3 look promising.

Now I have a headache! Time to take a break.

I can see this process isn't going to be as easy or clean as I hoped. In fact it looks like it's going to cause me much mental and emotional anguish! Agh!  But I will prevail and I'm sure I will have a much better idea how to perform quality searches when I'm done. Which is probably the whole idea of this assignment.

3 comments:

  1. Troy - sounds like you are on the right track. My undergrad degree program required a full research project.

    Academic Search Premiere is also a good database. As you can see from your research so far, it's all about finding the right combination of words. If I remember correctly, when articles come up in the database, the database will give you keywords. For my project, I used some of those keywords to keep searching for more articles.

    Best of luck on your final project.

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  2. After having used ERIC with no luck and only frustration, I resorted to using EBSCO and I immediately came up with a Jackpot of information.

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  3. Understand all the frustrations. You seem to be right on track! I have also chosen ERIC. Do you find it easier working ERIC through EBSCO vs. First Search?

    I initially started searching via EBSCO but decided to take First Search for a test spin.

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