Don't Google, CrossSearch!

Today, I attended a library information skills session which uncovered some essential facts about CrossSearch. CrossSearch is a portal for searching the Academy Library's range of electronic resources, including databases, e-journals, e-books, library catalogues, search engines, subject gateways, eprint servers, and other web resources.

The session focused on the different ways to search CrossSearch - how to search across multiple databases/resources all at the same time; how to use Quick Sets to get easy access to subject categorised databases (e.g. Business & Management, Humanities & Social Sciences, and Science & Technology); and how to search for items by type of resource (e.g. legislation, search engine, reference, etc.). It was great!

In the information skills session, the librarian was saying that CrossSearch is a great place to start a search; she said it was even better as a starting point than Google!

Better than Google?

I could not help myself - I love Google, so I had to ask why she thought CrossSearch is a better place to start than Google. The librarian laughed and said that she loved Google too and that it is a good search tool for finding information, but that there were a number of reasons to use CrossSearch first.

Quality and Relevance:
The items in CrossSearch, the electronic books, journals, databases and other resources, have been purchased by the Academy Library (usually together with the Kensington UNSW Library) for UNSW@ADFA students and staff to use. All of these resources have been reviewed and recommended by the lecturers and/or the librarians so they link to resources/information that is usually of a much higher quality, more reliable and relevant to our courses.

Organised Control
No one individual or group dictates what information is acceptable for the Web or how it should be presented. This lack of authority makes it easy for many people to publish their opinions, ideas and creative works, but it also means that there is no consistent quality control measures. Broken links abound, and some information can be there today and gone tomorrow.

Access to material not publicly available:
There is information that is available through CrossSearch that is not available through Google. This was a surprise to me as I thought that you can get any information through Google. Google can only access free public information and it seems that there is a lot of information that is not publically available, and the only way to access it is to pay for it (as the Academy Library has). This is why to use CrossSearch, I need to use my Student ID number and ADFAPass to authenticate myself. I have to type in these details as they prove I am a student at UNSW@ADFA and therefore an authorised user of Academy Library electronic resources.

What about Google Scholar?

Someone else asked about Google Scholar as he had heard that it was something that all university students should use. The librarian agreed and said that Google Scholar was a more valuable tool than the general Google search engine to use for research-based information. Not only does it provide easy access to more scholarly type material (e.g. peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, articles, academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organisations), the Academy Library has incorporated "Find-It UNSW@ADFA" link in Google Scholar search results, directing UNSW@ADFA users from items in Google Scholar to their availability from the Academy Library.

As long as we authenticate ourselves, we can get to the information that the Library pays for, as well as the free information that is available on the Internet.

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