Category Archives: Searching

A new development in scientific integrity

Posted on 1 April 2025 by Frank Norman

Recent changes in US scientific research are very worrying. The ‘anti-science movement’ is being spearheaded by Robert F Kennedy – a leading figure of the modern anti-vaccine movement for many years. On their own his views are nothing new – … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Search engines – out with the old, in with the new

Posted on 16 October 2013 by Frank Norman

Back in the summer Yahoo announced that it was to close the search engine AltaVista, and that duly happened in July. I suspect that most people’s reaction would be either “what on earth is Alta Vista?”  or “Blimey! Is that … Continue reading →

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Answering searching questions

Posted on 10 February 2012 by Frank Norman

For twenty years we have had some sort of desktop access to the scientific literature. At first we only had abstracts of articles, and accessed them through fairly clunky interfaces (anyone remember BIDS?). The introduction of PubMed in 1997 improved … Continue reading →

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Google: how to un-personalise your search

Posted on 29 June 2011 by Frank Norman

Google never stands still. It is forever seeking to improve the way it tries to match your search request to its database, and then to show you potentially useful websites. Mostly we are not aware of how it does this, … Continue reading →

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The challenge of going beyond

Posted on 17 May 2011 by Frank Norman

Change is a natural part of life so resisting it has always seemed futile to me. My hair falls out and turns grey and I prefer to just accept that it has happened rather than to wear a wig or … Continue reading →

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Ethical retrieval

Posted on 1 February 2011 by Frank Norman

It may surprise you to know that librarians have codes of professional ethics. The main  UK membership organisation for librarians,  CILIP, requires its members to follow its ethical code; the American Library Association have something similar.  Subject classification and indexing … Continue reading →

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