Searching and Browsing: Both Are Valuable

Greetings again. I hope that all is going well.

For those of us who do research or teaching or both, the published literature is an essential resource. Among other things, it can guide us in our research, keep our teaching fresh and current, and help us report our research in suitable context.

In my view, both searching the literature for material on specific topics and browsing in journals can aid in these regards.

Recently a librarian at our university gave a very helpful presentation in the research-methods course that I teach. The students and I appreciated the information that the librarian provided about bibliographic databases. We also appreciated what he taught us about search strategies.

What we learned from the librarian will be very useful in searching the literature.

Such well-focused searching is an important skill. Many of us should take advantage of chances to learn more about literature searching. Special thanks to all the librarians who provide such instruction.

But such searching isn’t everything. Something else that is helpful is to browse through journals in one’s field or look at their tables of contents.

Doing so helps one to obtain or maintain broad knowledge of one’s field. It also can alert one to useful reading that one wouldn’t have known to look for. Just in the past few weeks, browsing has led me to several articles useful in my work.

Searching is important. But browsing is valuable too. I recommend doing both.

Wishing you a good week— Barbara