DICE Project Final Report Resource Discovery Tools Evaluation and ...

DICE Final Report
I have found with many JISC services that although the search facility may offer sophisticated
searching, there’s often not much in my subject area or the metadata is inadequate to find it. Although
standard Google has its weaknesses, it is still largely more successful.
ACADEM3: No. Generally, my role has little need for academic searches.
STU5: No, I usually just use Google, sometimes its fine but other times I end up trawling through
information.
2. **Do you think would find such services useful in your learning?
MAN1: Very - more targeted returns than from general search engines like yahoogle
MAN2: Yes
EDTECH1: possibly, can see its benefits from a teaching perspective
ACADEM1: To a point and then availability and location of the identified resource proves to be a
barrier.
STU1: A RD tool that works to a similar standard as PubMed but with a more general data set would be
very useful to me and other learners. The links must be available to web resources for it to be of any
real use to learners, even if it is just a brief description but preferably an abstract as it is helpful to be
able to asses the relevance and usefulness before searching for a book or ordering an article from
document delivery.
STU2: Yes, such services are definitely useful as they either give the full text or at least give the place
where I can get a bit more information
ACADEM2: Yes - up to a point. Without the ability to search for more than one term or for a phrase the
tools are limited (for me anyway).
STU3: Definitely YES. I believe RD services are very useful when want to know what others have done
on a particular subject and to know the opinion of those regarded as authority in your field about the
subject.
STU4: Yes these services are quite useful for academic usage and e-learning purposes. With this
technology students are capable of gaining lots of e-resources from several online books, sites and
journals etc.
EDTECH2: Not really, sometimes I find them a bit restrictive, I find a more general web search has
produced some interesting results following unlikely leads.
EDTECH3: Yes, I think results from such services might be more directly relevant - sometimes web
searches throw up a lot of irrelevant stuff.
EDTECH4: My role is in ILT, in helping staff to locate and use e-resources in their teaching and for use
by their learners. I don’t have a learning role, other than my own CPD – the services are definitely
useful for this because they help me to understand developments in e-learning and resource discovery.
MAN3: Yes to some degree. Some search results looked interesting and different to searches found
from other more typical routes. Clearly the results were more ‘scholarly’ than those found via Google
and I didn’t always find the results from Google scholar that useful with the search terms I was using at
least. Problem will always be bringing it all together (which I’m aware d+ this is trying to do!) as can
easily forget about these extra services and just use Google.
ACADEM3: I think they will become more useful to me over time as comment on and assessment of e-
learning material becomes more widespread.
STU5: Yes, it’s really helpful to have specific searches. Google sometimes pulls up just too much
information.
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