ETL401 Topic 1:UsIng Learning Tools

Introduction
As I work at another university, I decided to investigate search results across both universities so as to gain a better idea as the databases and print collections etc. that impact each Library's search results and how differing results are impacted by the parameters set behind the scenes.

I think it salient to remember/to understand that searching and the search results are limited by what a particular university library holds or subscribes to. While that sounds obvious, it highlights a limitation in many people's understanding of their search results. For example, when possibly trying to do a literature review, like one students may need to do for their IB or when myself, as a Librarian, may do one for work or study purposes.

Primo Search

I never start out with a simple search so I went straight to the advanced search option and typed in teacher librarian and collaboration (as I believe it the most important roles for TLs within their whole school community)...

Results - CSU: 4249 and UNSW:3579 

However, when I delved further into the results, I noticed that while I had used advanced search and had teacher librarian in one of the search boxes, I found that my results were based not on AND (as I had presumed) but were using the boolean operator OR (infuriating!). So I "" teacher librarian and...

Refined results - CSU:1074 and UNSW:976 - what a difference.

What is also of interest (to me anyway), is that the Refine by Resource Type option on the left navigation bar is different - CSU sorts alphabetically, UNSW sorts by number of results. Does it matter? I think so and knowing how many users won't go past a page or two in Google, same concept applies here...if you can't see it listed, you could miss some relevant results. I prefer the alphabetical list as it applies some common sense to searching. 

UNSW Refine My Results by Resource Type 

CSU Refine My Results by Resource Type

The ability to limit my search results further by options down the left navigation bar make it easy to refine the search to a more usable result set. What is also of note, is that with Primo Search being an overarching search tool across many ubiquitous database sets, some of the search results are duplicates. And even if you turn deduping off, book chapters will pop up in the results possibly as well as the whole book. Fine for me who understands but I am know it is confusing to students trying to search usually with limited time frames.

Managing my Information Sources
I prefer to set up and link to my sources from Primo Search (one stop shop approach) . I also like to simplicity of exporting into my EndNote Web Account that I have set up. While I know it has limited functionality as compared to the full version of EndNote 6 for Windows or EndNote 4 for Mac, I need to be able to seemlessly link to my source list without needing to go to DropBox.