Reducing Database Choices With An “Undergrad” Checkbox

Catherine Pellegrino has a simple, brilliant, idea… in addition to the “peer-reviewed checkbox that appears in many databases (e.g. EBSCO), there ought to be an “undergrad” checkbox, which filters out all the weird stuff that database providers throw into their silos to enhance their stats for numbers of titles indexed, etc. It would weed out things like Dissertation Abstracts, and Unpublished conference papers, among others.

February 5, 2009 by Uncategorized 5

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5 Responses

  1. Chuck says:
    February 5, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    check this box
    Which would bring the total number of boxes that no one notices or uses to “2.”

    Reply
  2. mdoneil says:
    February 5, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    Add all the boxes you want
    You can add a dozen check boxes, but if there are not paramtric indices and appropriate metadata to support those checkboxes they are useless.

    It seems like the time and effort spent to tag existing ‘undergrad’ documents so they could be filtered out by this check box would be better spent providing instruction by the librarians to those that request materials that may not be beneficial.

    You know, the whole give a man a fish, teach a man to fish sort of thing.

    Simple, sure. Brilliant, not so much.

    Reply
    • effinglibrarian says:
      February 5, 2009 at 3:22 pm

      ditto on the checkboxes.
      why don’t we just put little smiley faces on the articles that are easy to comprehend. if you want a kid to learn to do research, grade his paper on it and give him an ‘F.’ that’s how I learned. “do it better next time” is the only thing that got me to work harder.

      Reply
  3. Anonymous says:
    February 5, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    Claire
    I hope her posting was tongue in cheek. Not every undergrad is a dumba**. When I was an undergrad, I used Dissertation Abstracts and unpublished conference papers A LOT.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous says:
    February 6, 2009 at 8:16 pm

    Checkboxes
    On its face sounds like a good idea but if students are still googling they do not get a choice like this and they prefer google anyway unless faculty members force them to cite better quality sources.

    Reply

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