Making the Most of GoogleJason CurtisElectronic Resources LibrarianShrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this presentation you should:

• Know about some of the services Google offers

• Know about some of the advanced search tools

• Know about some of the limitations of Google

What is Google?

• One of a number of search engines that aim to index the whole internet

• It has indexed over 25 billion web pages, including file types such as Word and PDF documents and Excel spreadsheets

• Google attempts to rank results based on presence of keywords searched for and links to page from other sites (PageRank)

Google’s Limitations

• It is not able to index much information contained within databases, catalogues etc. The so-called ‘deep web’

• It’s results only as good as the information available – the quality of information found needs to be appraised

What does it offer?

Some of the most useful services for health are:

• Google Search (the first page you normally see)• Google Images• Google Scholar• Google Co-op (includes health pages)

Google Advanced Search

Google Advanced Search allows you to:

• Limit to English language only• Limit by type of file (such as Word or PDF)• Search for phrases (such as “allergic reaction”)• Exclude word (ulcers not diabetic)• Search by domain or site (such as nhs.uk)

www.google.co.uk/advanced_search

Other Google search tips

Google search also offers:

• Synonym searching (~angina)• Definitions (define:rosacea)• Limit to UK pages only using the checkbox on the

main page

www.google.co.uk

Google Images

• Searches over 1 million images of variable quality and size

• See www.library.nhs.uk/images for more resources for healthcare

www.google.co.uk/images

Google Scholar

• Aims to index material from academic journals, theses, books and other scholarly material covering all disciplines

• Has some very limited options for field searching, date limits and publication searching

www.google.co.uk/scholar

Limitation of Google Scholar

• Not all academic journals indexed • Frequency of updates is unknown• No links to NHS e-journals• No information about locally held print

journals• Lacks features such as combining searches,

limiting to age group or publication type, saving searches or creating alerts

Advantages of Google Scholar

• Extremely quick and easy to use• Can sometimes throw up articles not retrieved in

a database search (e.g. Medline, CINAHL)• You can see who has cited a paper• Useful for searches outside the field of

healthcare, where the NHS has no access to appropriate databases

Alternatives to Google Scholar

• The National Library for Health provides access to databases including Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, PsycINFO, HMIC, British Nursing Index and Health Business Elite

• These offer advanced search features and provide links to NHS e-journals

www.library.nhs.uk/booksandjournals

Google Co-op (including Health)

• Pages can be tagged by bodies working in the field (such as the US National Library for Health)

• A search for a basic medical condition will bring up a list of categories to choose from

• Works well, but not perfect as not all useful pages tagged

Google Co-op

Google Co-op also allows the creation of personalised search engines, for example:

UK Patient Information

http://tinyurl.com/25kcw6

Medical and Surgical Wikis

http://tinyurl.com/5g26w5

Other Features

• Currency conversions (such as ‘12$ in £’ or ‘£5 in €’)

• Converting units of measurement (such as ‘12oz in grams’ or ‘150ml in cups’)

• Calculations (such as ‘15% of 240’ or ’34.5/4’) • Translation tools that allow you to convert

passages of text or web pages in selected languages

www.google.co.uk/language_tools

Other features cont.

Personalised iGoogle home page that can contain search boxes, RSS feeds, news, maps and more

www.google.co.uk/ig

Finally…

• Google is not a replacement for resources such as healthcare databases, library catalogues or systematic reviews of evidence

• Can be useful for ‘quick and dirty’ searches but should not be relied upon

• Consider it one of a range of tools, and come along for training on the others available