This is not an entry about Frederick, but I bet it will be of interest to many in Frederick and beyond. I “grew up” doing literature searches with Scifinder and/or PubMed. In the past year, however, I find there’s an enormous barrier to going to either of those places when I have the Google toolbar right there on my desktop. I have found many pertinent journal articles via Google. I have even come across articles that I didn’t realize were relevant. Maybe Google favors curious minds (some may say we have short attention span, but I think they’re just jealous). What I love most about Google is that you don’t even know how to spell! The “Did you mean ....?” feature is fantastic. I find a lot of times, my answer is “yup, that’s what I meant. Find it.” You can’t get away with that on Scifinder or PubMed. Try searching for “KLH” (keyhole limpet hemocyanin) on Google and your first couple of entries are all about home theater speakers. Hmm, not so much what I had in mind. BUT, scroll down to the bottom of the page and you see other meaning for KLH, click the one you want and off you go.
Maybe the value of the $cifinder and PubMed search interfaces are that articles are actually cataloged and cross referenced, you can limit searches to portions of the article, date ranges, language, etc. Those are all good. For now though, Google is #1. If I can’t find it there, I either don’t bother or if I know that I should be getting better hits, I go to one of the other two.
CAS, take note. Google, you too.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Round 1: Google v Scifinder, Round 2: Google v PubMed
