Online Searching: A Scientist's Perspective

Book excerpt: The availability of online information sources allows today's scientists to perform powerful, well-targeted searches, yet often the full potential of such searches is not realised. A sound understanding of how information is stored and how effective search strategies are developed is crucial if one is to fully utilise this potential. This book examines the content of some of the most important scientific databases and explains the indexing policies used by the database producers. The mechanics of online searching are discussed, and the author details and logically explains the key principles involved in keyword, chemical substances and numeric searches. This knowledge is combined to show how effective search strategies are constructed and used.