Step #5 OneStop Search

I did a search for: race car drivers; with and without quotes.  Without quotes, I got significantly more hits than with quotes.  Sometimes, it takes awhile for the program to then open up the article that I clicked on.  At least you are able to print the article or email it to yourself; all the functionality is there as it would be if you were searching that one database.  I never sorted by number of hits before.  I will have to remember to do that.

Infotrac Onefile had the most hits: 4968.  I did the same search in Onefile, and I did get the same amount of results except that was just the number of results in the Magazines.  There were 64 more in Academic Journals; 33 more in Books; 5840 more in Newspapers; and 43 more in Multimedia.  I noticed on the OneStop Search results screen, when you scroll down to the Infotrac Onefile heading, it then shows links to the Academic Journals, et. al.  So you can get to them all on OneStop Search. 

I looked up auto repair information for two different patrons in one day.  There is a fair amount of text in Auto Repair Reference Center and Motor/AllData, but I think someone doing a report on a car wouldn’t need repair information.  Also, you can’t just search either of those databases to begin with.  First, you have to pick your car information, and then you get to the repair information.  So, I’m not sure if the databases are indexed like Infotrac or some of the other databases are.

I think it would be better to use OneStop Search than going to a specific database if you have a patron who says they want “everything” on a topic, or if they haven’t narrowed down their topic yet.  This way, you and the patron can get “everything” using reliable resources than just Google.  Although it is hard to tell how the database will treat your search, you still have the options of searching many databases at once, thus, saving time.  One of the things that surprises me is that almost any search you do includes hits from Ancestry Library Edition.  I think it is easy to get false hits especially if you are just doing a keyword search.  The database that had the most hits (Infotrac Onefile) does not surprise me because I know that is our primary database with full-text and indexed magazine articles.