The Use of Information Seeking Skills - Report Example

Steps Taken to Seek Information The assignment was to report on the steps taken to find two journals (less than five years old) regarding the role of registered nurse in health care teams. This should be conducted thru the use of the InfoGate with the web address http://www.library.unisa.edu.au/infogate Upon encoding the web address, I was redirected to the new infogate 2007. Well, there was actually a choice of reverting back to the old infogate but then I thought that in the long run, I would be using the new infogate so I chose it by waiting for the redirecting process to finish. The Interface that appeared in my computer's screen is shown in Figure 1 (blue and pink arrows supplied) : Figure 1. Screenshot of Website My first impulse was to type in the search engine (directed by the pink arrow) the keyword "Nursing Health Care Teams Journal". However, upon doing so I got listings which were very vague and very irrelevant. The first on the list was about a nursing organization with no indication of what I was looking for. Then, I thought, if I was searching the documents manually, I will go to the library. It occurred to me that there was a library icon in the interface directed by the blue arrow. Upon clicking the library icon, I entered a site where there was a category dubbed as Resource which contained the subcategory Database. I figured that since I needed data regarding a journal then this is what exactly I am looking for so I clicked the Database icon. What appeared on the screen were search categories such as Database Titles and Database Subjects. These categories were accompanied by letters A to Z indicating the first letter of the title of the database. I clicked the letter N under the database Subjects as I was searching journals regarding Nursing. I was given a list of databases which started with the letter N. I saw the subject "Nursing and Health: A SAGE Full Text Edition" as I reckoned that since I was looking for the text of a journal, this would be the most probable place to search. What appeared in the screen was a text stating the terms and condition of use of the database and decision icons on whether I was agreeing to the terms of use or not. I clicked the "I Agree" button and entered my official username and password provided by the University. What happened next was that I was directed to the CSA Illumina site where I clicked Browse Full Text besides the Health Sciences: A SAGE FULL TEXT Collection. A list of the journals appeared in the screen where I clicked Policy, Politics and Nursing Practice Volume 1-7, 2000-2006. I chose this because I was looking for information regarding nursing and team health care. Politics and policy certainly applies to teams and organizations. I browsed through the available volumes and issues and I found many articles which relates to my inquiry. Among the many articles I chose the "The effect of nurse's use of principles of learning organization and organizational effectiveness" by Jeong, et. al. (2007) provided by the Medline database and the "Learning From the Best: The Benefits of a Structured Health Policy Fellowship in Developing Nursing Health Policy Leaders" by Linda Hofler (2006). Factors which made me choose the two articles The study of Jeong et. al. (2007) was to determine the effects of nurses' use of the principle of learning organization proposed by Senge in 1990 in organizational effectiveness. Since I was searching for nursing and health care teams, this was precisely what I was looking for. This research studies how health care teams can make use of the principles of learning organization to make the health care organization more effective in delivering services. In this study, we see the nurse's role in making the, let's say, hospital function more effectively by having a knowledge of how to integrate themselves more effectively in the organization. Hofler's research entitled "Learning From the Best: The Benefits of a Structured Health Policy Fellowship in Developing Nursing Health Policy Leaders" undertaken in 2006 dealt with describing the experience of a nurse leader engaged in a state Health Policy Fellowship instituted in North Carolina by the North Carolina Center for Nursing (NCCN). In this document, the reader is informed of the training that a nurse leader must undertake such as observing and interacting with experienced mentors and the right way of understanding these experiences. Again, this is very relevant to my topic because it discusses how nurses can become effective leaders of the health care team they belong to. Other articles were not related to the role of nurses in teams and were discussing issues such as the migration of nurses to other better-paying countries. Other Strategies Used to Seek Information In the CSA Illumina site, there are actually four ways to search for an inquiry. They were the 1) Quick Search, 2) Advanced Search, 3) Search Tools and 4) Browse. The one that I have used was the Browse tool. In the Quick Search, the inquirer is asked to type the keywords of the subject of his inquiry. After pressing the go button, a list of results is displayed on the screen. The Advanced Search tool provided a way of making the inquiry more specific or broader. To make it clearer, please refer to Figure 2. As one could see from the figure, the inquirer can refine his choice by the category "and, or, not" tool directed by the black arrow. For example, an inquirer can type in Nursing in the space pointed at by the pink arrow. Then one can choose 'and' type in Health Care in the space below the space where Nursing was typed. The inquirer can make the search broader by choosing 'or' instead of 'and'. He can also be more precise by choosing 'not' and typing the subjects related to nursing but the inquirer would not like to waste his time browsing. In Figure 2, we see that there are actually many levels of refining the choice made. Figure 2. Illustration of Advanced Search Interface The third alternative is using Search Tools wherein the inquirer can choose the field code making the computer know whether the typed words are keywords or some other form. In this tool, one can also specify the earliest dates and the latest dates making it very user friendly especially for us who were required to obtain journals which were less than five years old. This feature is also available for the Advanced Search tool. I was able to experience using all the four tools. For my part, I consider them at par with each other as they produced the same results with a slight difference in what result comes before the other. In general, however, all of them produced listings that were very close to my inquiry. Alternative Methods of Seeking Information Besides from these tools, I can resort to typing in other combination of words such as 'nursing health care issues' or 'nursing team' (without the apostrophes). Another strategy is to type it with apostrophe but make sure that the words make sense such as "nursing and health care organizations" because the search engine is going to search for any document that has those words exactly the way the inquirer typed his subject of interest. I can also make use of other words which has a meaning close to what I am seeking. For example, if I have to seek information regarding nursing, I can type words such as role women medicine. I could also include a date which I want the resulting list to belong to. By just adding, deleting or modifying some words, I can broaden or refine my search. I also tried to refine my search (in Google and Yahoo search engines) by specifying the format I would like my document to be. For example, I typed in Nursing Health Care Team PDF and Nursing Health Care Organization journals. With this, I was able to refine the resulting list by eliminating other formats. This strategy, however, is not full proof as some results are still HTML documents which needs to be accessed first before the PDF file can be downloaded. There are also sites which are available to subscribers such as Blackwell Synergy. By gaining a subscription to this site through the university, I can have a wider database on which to conduct research. Reference: Hofler, Linda D. (2006). Learning From the Best: The Benefits of a Structured Health Policy Fellowship in Developing Nursing Health Policy Leaders. Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 110-113. SAGE Publications Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA Jeong, Seok Hee; Lee, Taewha; Kim, In Sook; Lee, Myung Ha; Kim, Mi Ja (2007). The effect of nurses' use of the principles of learning organization on organizational effectiveness. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 2007 Apr, 58(1):53-62. England Read More