This is a book on the principles and mechanics of online searching which is aimed primarily at librarians and library science students. It is the second edition of a work originally published in 2006 during which time the world has moved on, and many of the databases originally used have undergone considerable revision.
The work is very detailed and exhaustively and meticulously researched. It begins by looking at database structure and then at search mechanisms – Boolean logic, proximity operators, truncation, stop words, false hits and all the other tricks of the trade in the online searcher's armoury. The succeeding chapters show how to put this all into practice by looking at a representative sample of vendor databases for bibliographic and numeric work and subject databases for the social sciences, humanities, science and medicine.
One of the interesting aspects of these chapters is the way in which many of these vendors have changed their database interfaces in the three years since the first edition and the reasoning behind these changes. Experienced searchers will have picked up on these changes and wondered whether they were part of the response to users moving away from specialist databases and towards using such search engines as Google Scholar.
This must surely raise the question about the role of the librarian in the search process. After all, this is a book about librarians and library science students acquiring the tools and knowledge to utilise databases effectively. How is this transferred to the library's users? The final chapters help here with one chapter on search behaviour, another on the reference interview and a final chapter on teaching other people about databases. With many library users bypassing the expert help altogether and either not using the specialist databases at all or not using them effectively, it is vital for librarians to be prepared by a text such as this and to redouble their efforts to steer their users towards quality information sources.
I recommended the first edition of this work for its verve, clarity and insightful tips for successful searching. The second edition builds on the strength of the first and successfully addresses the challenges brought about by the changes since 2006. All databases have been re‐examined and bibliographic references updated. If there is a fault it is in the refusal to investigate federated search engines. Bell says that this is because they eliminate “the vendors” individual interfaces and all their features. I hope that she will reconsider this in a future edition, as they are bound to become ever more important in the battle for the attention of end‐user online searchers.
