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"Chemicalinformation instruction in the age of Google(TM"" is a bpaper presented on September 11, 2006 at the 232nd American Chemical Society National Meeting in San Francisco, CA. It discusses the challenges and opportunities for chemical information instruction to a generation of students who grew up with Google.
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Chemical information instruction in the age of
Charles F. HuberDavidson Library, University of
CaliforniaSanta Barbara, CA 93106-9010
Presented at the 232nd ACS National MeetingSan Francisco, CA Monday, September 11, 2006
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
2
Chemical Information Instruction in the Age of Google™
The assumptions of the “Google Generation”.
Where they’re wrong and where they’re right
Teaching points from Google What the future holds…
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
The assumptions of the “Google Generation” The “Millennials” (born 1982-present) are
the generation now passing through higher education.
Social scientists point to a variety of common characteristics of this generation, several of which link to the fact that “they have never known life without computers and the Internet.” (Ollinger, 2003)
Add to that: “or Google.”
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Assumptions about information searching in GenGoogle
Assumption 1: “Everything I need is on the Web, and available instantly.”
And corollaries: “If I can’t find it with a Google search, it
probably doesn’t exist.” “All information is free on the Web.” “If it does exist only in print, it’s not
worth my time to find it.”
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
More assumptions…
Assumption 2: “All searches are ‘good enough’ searches”, i.e. Searches will always find far more hits that you can examine, and the first few (five, ten, twenty) will be good enough.”
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Still more assumptions
Assumption 3: “Anything you need can be found by keyword searching.”
The Ideal Interface Corollary: “The ideal search interface looks
like…
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Not this…
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Let alone this…
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
But rather this…
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Where they’re wrong…and where they’re right. Assumption 1: Partially correct
There’s an awful lot available free on the net, and the amount is growing (digitization projects, institutional repositories, open access journals, etc.)
But there’s still a lot of material that hasn’t been digitized.
A lot of the material that is available in digital form is not free (e.g. most major chemical journals)
Even some that is free isn’t well “crawled” by Google and other search engines (e.g. national patent databases.)
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Assumptions: wrong and right Assumption 2: Wrong
Though many searches work well in Google (e.g. for finding basic background information) for some, “good enough” isn’t good enough.
Scholarly review of the literature on a topic requires comprehensive searching to find all.
Patentablility searching requires comprehensive searching to eliminate all.
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Assumptions: wrong and right Assumption 3: Critically flawed for
chemical information. Keyword searching can be greatly
improved by intellectually-assigned subject headings.
Chemical substance searching by chemical name alone frequently fails.
Numerical range searching for data doesn’t work with Web search engines.
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Teaching opportunities with Google™
Google Advanced Search can be used to introduce: Fielded searching Boolean logic and proximity Search limits
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Teaching opportunities with Google™ Google Scholar can be used to
introduce: Distinctions between scholarly and
popular publications Linking to articles
Does your institution have SFX linking to holdings? Has it been implemented for Google Scholar?
Cited reference linking
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Teaching opportunities with Google™
Google Book Search can be used to introduce: Use of books in scientific research Concepts of copyright and public
domain
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Compare and contrast… Google Book Search and your local online
catalog. Google Book Search can find items, but do you have access to them? Why might you need different search strategies to find the same book in the two resources?
Google Book Search and scientific e-book resources (e.g. Knovel, CRCnetBases) Compare text searching with in-depth indexing (especially of numerical values.)
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Compare and contrast… Google Scholar and classic literature
indexes (e.g., CA, Web of Science, INSPEC, etc.) Content – What types of literature do they
index? What’s missing from each? Subject indexing – How does specialized subject
indexing enhance retrieval? Linking features – Cited references, citing
references, CrossRef, “related records” (Note that ISI and Google both use this phrase. But do they mean the same thing?)
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Compare and contrast… Google searches on a chemical topic
with intellectually selected collections of Web sites, such as: ChemFinder
(http://chemfinder.cambridgesoft.com/) Chemdex (U. of Sheffield,
http://www.chemdex.org/) Links for Chemists (U. of Liverpool,
http://www.liv.ac.uk/Chemistry/Links/links.html))
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Features Google lacks… so far
Detailed chemical searching Molecular formula Chemical synonyms Structure searching (incl.
Substructure and similarity searching) Reaction searching
Analysis tools
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Turning “good enough” searching into comprehensive searching For “Millennials”, “Learning more closely
resembles Nintendo than logic” (Ollinger, 2003), that is, they tend to prefer trial-and-error to rigid rules.
But, with a little structure, “trial and error” turns into “pearl-growing”:
Define search needs Determine starting points (keywords, authors, etc.) Use easiest or most readily available search tools Analyze results Build on the “good” results found “Lather, rinse, repeat” until needs met.
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
What the future holds
Will Google be replaced? Maybe, but whatever replaces it will
be at least as powerful, at least as easy to use… and designed for general searchers, not chemists.
Added sophistication for chemists will come from add-ons designed to work with the basic search engine.
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Future for chemical searching More subscription-free literature
But how much, how soon? More literature open to web search
engine robots Open data; specialized markup
languages (e.g. ChemML) which will allow development of Web data search tools.
Substance identifiers which work with web search engines (IUPAC-NIST Chemical Identifier = INChI)
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
References Kirkwood, Patricia, “Teaching chemical information:
tips and techniques”, 19th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, West Lafayette, IN, July 30 – August 3, 2006 (Available at: http://acscinf.org/dbx/mtgs/BCCE/2006/index.asp)
Ollinger, Diana, “Boomers, Gen-Xers, Millennials: Understanding the New Students”, EDUCAUSE Review, 38(4) (Jul.-Aug. 2003) 37-47 (Available at: http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0342.pdf)
Grabinski, C. Joanne, “Cohorts of the Future”, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, no. 77 (Spring 1998) 73-84
232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Sept. 11, 2006
Acknowledgements
The UCSB Libraries, University of California – Santa Barbara
Chemistry, biochemistry, and engineering students of UCSB for the past nineteen years
Bartow Culp and the ACS Division of Chemical Education