USING WEDGE WORDS
You have probably noticed in the course of your searching that some words are more powerful than others. I call them wedge words, because they're good at prying out a very specific kind of information. We might add them to a search topic to tell a search engine the exact format in which we want our results, or the exact type of resource we're looking for.
On the net, one of the most powerful of these words is faq -- frequently asked questions. As librarians, we know perfectly well that people ask the same questions over and over. For medical conditions, for example, everybody wants to know What is it? What parts of my body are affected? What are the symptoms? Can it be prevented? How is it treated? How do I cope with it? Will it kill me?
One of the great strengths of the Internet is that experts on virtually every topic have created FAQ files to answer the basic questions. If you're starting to research a topic about which you know nothing, you can use Google and type mytopic FAQ. (Why Google? Since it ranks results in accordance with how many people link to a site, there's a pretty good chance that the top results will in fact be good answers.)
Search engines are good at finding search terms, but can't handle relationships between words -- to a machine, there is no real difference between library school and school library. One way to compensate for that is exact phrase searching, but some questions can't be stated with simple exact phrases. For example, take the question: What percentage of Hispanic-Americans are of Mexican descent?
What you need is a word that contains within itself an implied relationship. In this case, any question about the make-up of a group of people is covered by the wedge word demographics. Using the phrase Hispanic-Americans + demographics, you are led to a number of statistical resources that break down the group membership. Similarly, the question I have about koalas, that eat eucalyptus leaves, is "What, if anything, do the eucalyptus trees get out of this?" Search engines can't handle that question, but I can use the words for relationships between organisms in a food system: "parasitic" for a purely exploitative relationship, and "symbiotic" for a mutually beneficial arrangement.
When our users are deciding whether to buy a DVD player, but don't know which brand they want, the most helpful resource would be a comparison chart, where our users can see what features the different models of DVD players have, for what price. Once they've narrowed down the possible choices, THEN we can look for a review of a specific model to see if the stated features actually work.
When you know your answer is in the invisible web, as with my question last week about the number of patents for mousetraps, you can simply add the word database to your topic.
Here are some other wedge words:
"Word 6.0" + tutorial
"rock music" + encyclopedia
"used cars" + "book value"
catholicism + expert
maps + "lesson plans"
cataloging + listserv
audio + "search engine"
That's not an exhaustive list; you can think of others yourselves. In fact, you're already good at it because these wedge words look astonishingly like something librarians work with all the time: subject subdivisions. Who knew that they would become words of magical power, even more potent in the free-for-all, keyword-searching world of the Internet than in the orderly world of subject cataloging?
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READER RESPONSE
Amy Hartman, Electronic Document Librarian at Kansas State University's
Dept. of Ag. Communications, writes:
I enjoyed your article, "The Fate of Nondigitized Scholarly Resources" (http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib70.html).
Here at Kansas State U., we have just done about 24,000 pages worth of
digitization of our own research. Practically all of the publications of
the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station, produced from 1888-1945, are
on the web in Acrobat format at
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/pr_histpubs/. They cover every agricultural topic, and provide lots of information
about farm life at that time.
We also have practically all of our current material -- around 2000 publications -- at
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/library/. One of those hundred-year-old
publications lamented the fact that agricultural experiment stations produce
hundreds of useful publications, available for free, but few people know about
them. I'm always happy to help more people find them.
We owe thanks to Amy and her colleagues for making this resource widely available through the web.
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GOOD NEWS: Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com/) reports that Chris Sherman, formerly About.com's web search guide, is becoming his associate editor:
"Chris will be taking on a new, daily newsletter about search engines that will be
offered from Search Engine Watch in the very near future. This newsletter will
provide searching tips, looks at new search tools and keep you updated with
breaking headlines about search engines. We'll let you know, when it is ready for
sign-ups!"
I have long admired Chris's ability to offer advice that novices can understand and experienced searchers can still learn from. His column will be a welcome addition. (To see my guru interview with Chris, go to http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib41.html.)
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COOL QUOTE
It is as though many people read only to find that which is offensive, a vast umbrage army, unconcerned with context . . .
MAYBE WE SHOULD have a nationwide umbrage
moratorium. Let's set the odometer back to zero, and
assume that everyone is acting out of sincere and
useful motives. We will, of course, be disappointed,
as there are actual villains out there, but maybe our
grip on reality will be a little stronger.
Jon Carroll, "Sir, I Take Personal Offense." San Francisco Chronicle, April 5, 2001
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/
04/05/DD155676.DTL
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You are welcome to copy and distribute or e-mail any of my own articles for noncommercial purposes (but not those by my guest writers) as long as you retain this copyright statement:
Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 2000.
Publishers may license the content for a reasonable fee.
