STUDENT (Australian): Excuse me. Could you help me with something?
LIBRARIAN (Australian): Sure thing. What’s troubling you?
STUDENT: I’m working on a research paper for my nutritional
science class, but not having much luck finding information.
LIBRARIAN: All right. What’s the topic of your paper?
STUDENT: Um, well, basically how a vegan diet affects the
body.
LIBRARIAN: That’s quite broad, isn’t it?
STUDENT: Yeah, I know. But that was the assignment. Most
students are selecting ethnic diets, but I’m really interested in veganism.
LIBRARIAN: May I ask why?
STUDENT: Well, it seems like more and more people are
choosing to be vegan. Mostly for ethical purposes, I suppose. But we’ve been
learning in class about nutrient deficiencies and how they massively impact the
human body. I’ve heard that it’s not easy to get all of
your nutrients eating a vegan diet, so I thought this was a good chance to find
out whether that’s true or not.
LIBRARIAN: Fair enough. Tell me what you’ve found so far.
STUDENT: I’ve looked through just about every
nutrition-related journal out there, and there are tons of studies on B12 and
iron deficiencies in long-term vegans. And some articles on vitamin D
deficiency, but that’s not as common.
LIBRARIAN: Uh-huh.
STUDENT: So,
I know a lot about what nutrients are lacking in a vegan diet and why. But… but I still don’t have any solid evidence of these
nutritional deficiencies causing serious problems in long-term vegans.
LIBRARIAN: I see what you’re after. And you’ve only searched
in nutrition journals?
STUDENT: So far, yes. I reckon that anything about
nutrition and the vegan diet would be there.
LIBRARIAN: You’d be surprised, actually. I think the trick is
to be a bit more creative in your library search. How much time do you have to
work on this project?
STUDENT: Ah…let’s see…10 days left.
LIBRARIAN: Brilliant. That’s plenty of time.
LIBRARIAN: For starters, you need to expand your search to
general medical journals. The reason is that nutritionists are not the only
ones publishing on diets, and how they, well, how they affect the bodies.
STUDENT: All right.
LIBRARIAN: But more importantly, you can set the search terms
to look in the body of the text rather than just the title or abstract. That
way, if an author even mentions a study on your topic, you’ll be able to look
in their reference list and find it.
STUDENT: So, look for leads to other research within
articles.
LIBRARIAN: Exactly.
STUDENT: OK.
LIBRARIAN: You may also want to do a search on the internet
for news articles.
STUDENT: News? Why news?
LIBRARIAN: Most scientific research is announced first in the
media. Not in daily newspapers, necessarily, but also in magazines geared
towards specific interests. Like, Science Magazine…or the Economist. They are
meant for both experts and the general public, and are therefore accessible to
all.
STUDENT: That seems like a lot to sift through. I mean, I’m
a bit strapped on time, and searching the Internet will give me hundreds of
thousands, if not millions, of results.
LIBRARIAN: Right. But you can set the search to only show
results posted in, let’s say, the past year. That will significantly reduce
your workload and will ensure you’re seeing only the most up-to-date findings.
STUDENT: Huh. That’s true.
LIBRARIAN: Also, you can do an advanced search and only look
at articles that have full reference lists included. It’s up to you.
STUDENT: That might be a bit too restrictive. Anyway, I’ll
give your suggestions a go.
LIBRARIAN: If you still have problems, let me know and we’ll
try doing a search together. I’m about to end my shift, but I’ll be back
tomorrow from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m.
STUDENT: Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time.
LIBRARIAN: That’s what I’m here for!