Authentic PPIE – the (re)search for authentic engagement

Image: https://librariantolibrarian.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/librarians-are-magic/

I just want to add a quick nugget of praise here to the wonderful Librarians at the hospital library (yes, hospitals have libraries too..!). The library provides a fantastic resource for healthcare practitioners to learn more about their practice and find out about the latest innovations as well as improvements in treatments and diagnostics through research.

You can order and borrow books just like a public library, and the staff can help you search the journals and academic databases to help with research projects like the one I’m doing 🙂 As part of the NHS, the Trust has arrangements with organisations like OpenAthens which enables staff to access a wide range of journals and databases remotely, through an online search system.

Now this is where the skill of Librarians really comes to the fore: searching for an academic article is a bit like searching for an air fryer online. You put in search terms such as: ‘air fryer’, ‘two drawers’, ‘£100’ and the search engine will come up with a list of items which match your search terms. The trouble is that the search results will also come up with things you don’t need (like a desk with ‘two drawers’ or a printer worth ‘£100’), or aren’t relevant. So how do you filter out the irrelevant stuff to get to the good stuff?

Enter stage left: boolean operators. Now, I’ll be honest, when I first heard that term I immediately began thinking of DnD and the idea that Boolean Operators were some kind of enigmatic race with magical powers…However, what it actually means is the words and, or, and not. These magical words* will allow you to shape and refine your search in a way which saves time and is more focussed. This is especially important if you’re doing any kind of literature review, because you need to be able to report back on your ‘search strategy’ so that other researchers know how you went about finding and selecting which papers you decided to include in your research (rather than scattering them all over the floor and choosing papers according to which ones your cat decided to sit on**. (This is not considered a robust technique, although possibly quite entertaining.)

Anyway – I’m very new to this area of research, but the lovely Aaron from the Library team patiently sat with me and explained how it worked. (He works with the lovely Rebecca. Perhaps all Librarians ought to have ‘the lovely’ added to their name badge?)

I suspect I’ll need to practice a bit more, as the search results list he sent me was rather more comprehensive and reliable than the one I came up with, but learning is all part of the process!

So, the moral of the story here is: make friends with Librarians! (They may or may not have secret super powers.)

*Yes, I have now decided that they are magical.

**It is common knowledge that cats will sit on anything other than the floor wherever possible.