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Item Comparison of Agricultural Database Subject Overlap(2018-05-15) Ritchie, StephanieAgricultural researchers and science librarians must understand which research literature databases provide the most comprehensive coverage of agricultural subjects to support research inquiries. Once the domain of a few specialized databases, agricultural research literature is now covered by broad, multidisciplinary databases. The purpose of this study was to determine the most comprehensive database(s) for agricultural literature searching in terms of the scope of agricultural subject content provided by each database. We compared eight databases that cover a sample set of agricultural research literature for a range of agricultural sub-topics to determine how much overlap exists and which database(s) best support discovery of agricultural research literature. We found that the multidisciplinary databases provided the most comprehensive coverage and that one of the agriculture specific databases matched the coverage provided by the multidisciplinary databases. This study will help researchers and librarians determine where to invest their effort and resources when looking to find agricultural research content.Item Comparison of Agricultural Database Subject Scope Overlap(2018-02-15) Ritchie, StephanieTechnology to provide access to research literature in the sciences is evolving at the same rapid pace as most information technology innovations. Once the domain of a few specialized databases, much research literature is now covered by broad, multidisciplinary databases. In this changing landscape, how do researchers and librarians know which existing and new tools best serve information needs? A study to determine the most comprehensive database(s) for agricultural literature searching, in terms of the scope of agricultural subject content provided by each database, was developed to help answer this question for the agricultural and related sciences. We compared eight databases that cover a sample set of agricultural research literature for a range of agricultural sub-topics to determine how much overlap exists and which database(s) best support discovery of agricultural research literature. We found that the multidisciplinary databases provided the most comprehensive coverage, but also that one of the agriculture subject specific databases matched the coverage provided by the multidisciplinary databases. In addition to comparing the subject coverage of each database, we explored data visualizations tools developed for other disciplines to determine if they could be used to display associations between the eight databases. A couple network visualizations tools including Cytoscape, helped produce figures to illustrate the connections between the sample set of literature and each database, as well the databases relative to each other. This study will help researchers and librarians determine where to invest their effort when looking to find agricultural research content.Item Can Google Scholar Give Us Everything We Need? Evaluation of Research Literature Databases for Subject Scope and Search Retrieval in the Sciences(2017-06-08) Ritchie, StephaniePrompted by changes to the creation and indexing of scientific literature and those databases that compile this literature, an evaluation and comparison of eight databases (AGRICOLA, AGRIS, BIOSIS, CABI, FSTA, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science) for their breadth of subject scope and effectiveness in search result retrieval for the agricultural sciences was conducted over the past year. In one study, we evaluated the databases for subject scope in agricultural literature. Thirty citations from three large literature reviews in different domains of agricultural science (agronomy, animal and meat science, and human nutrition) were randomly selected and searched in each database. In a second study, we evaluated the quality of the search of these eight databases by conducting a series of searches for the three domains of agricultural research to test the retrieval of content and examine the first 100 results for relevance. A reexamination of the subject scope and search quality of the major agricultural sciences databases will help determine which of these database tools are most useful for agricultural research.