Librarian's Guide to Online Searching: Cultivating Database Skills for Research and Instruction, 6th Edition

by Christopher Brown

Librarians need to know of existing databases, and they must be able to teach search capabilities and strategies to library users. This practical guide introduces librarians to a broad spectrum of fee-based and freely available databases and explains how to teach them. The updated 6th edition of this well-regarded text covers new databases on the market as well as updates to older databases. It also explains underlying information structures and demonstrates how to search most effectively. It introduces readers to several recent changes, such as the move away from metadata-based indexing to full text indexing by vendors covering newspaper content. Business databases receive greater emphasis. As in the previous edition, this book takes a real-world approach, covering topics from basic and advanced search tools to online subject databases. Each chapter includes a thorough discussion, a recap, concrete examples, exercises, and points to consider, making it an ideal text for courses in database searching as well as a trustworthy professional resource.

Genres: Nonfiction, Textbooks

621 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 18, 2021

About the author

Librarian Note: There are multiple authors by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Chanda Scobee · Rating 2 out of 5]

My least favorite textbook and course so far, but necessary. A lot of the information was out of date, so our professor would supplement with additional reading besides just what’s in the chapter, which meant most of what was in the chapter wasn’t actually that useful or relevant. The course would’ve run more smoothly with just supplemental reading, rather than trying to use this book as a main source, and to me, that makes this a poor textbook for this purpose.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perfectly functional guide for introductory lessons. Neatly explores both effective use of publicly available, general purpose resources and restricted access, specialized databases. Repeats some of the basics around determining patron needs and interests and then describes how to apply the pursue the patron's query through available search resources..