She'll Google That - Rant

A nursing faculty member at an Australian University was complaining in the December, 2007 issue of the AORN Journal that when she did her usual Google searching for data on incidence of accidently retained sponges, she got waaaaay too many results. What a surprise. (Dripping sarcasm). Her solution? Use Google Scholar, and oh my, was that better! (More sarcasm). Only 231 hits. But she was thrilled because the search contained mostly credible resources and went back 30 years.

This is the kind of report that makes librarians crazy, or crazier than we usually are. And it's published in AORN, one of the world's top nursing journals. We're concerned. We wonder: how'd she get to be in a position of teaching future nurses doing Google searching with nary a nod to the concept of database searching? You know, databases such as Medline, the world's largest biomedical database with 15 million citations and indexing back to 1950, and CINAHL, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health, the world's most comprehensive indexing and abstracting database for nursing literature?

Poor baby. How upsetting that her Google search yielded too many hits and "...an eclectic range of information and 'facts'" Does she not have a clue that databases such as PubMed have search features such as subject headings, subheadings and limit capabilities that allow you to hone your search to get the precise retrieval you're looking for?

But wait...there's more. She's saying that the "World's best books and scholarly journals will become increasingly available on your computer monitor at the touch of a key..." Well, sure. But whom does she think is going to be paying for them...the Easter Bunny? Unless the publishing industry suddenly decides it no longer wants or needs to be in business, these resources will have to be paid for. Guess who's paying for them now?? LIBRARIES, THAT"S WHO. Ok, I'm calming down. I'll stop shouting now.