Bibliographic System in Health Care
Classifying knowledge in books and other documents is in the domain of library and information sciences. Books and other documents are considered "physical objects" that can be classified in a number of ways; however, subject classification is considered the most significant characteristic.
Whereas scientists in a field identify the knowledge of the field, bibliographic classifiers organize the knowledge produced by the scientists ( Landgridge , 1992). The classification system is used to index the literature and thus serves a purpose of location and retrieval of the indexed documents.
When the classification system is accompanied by an alphabetical list of terms with cross-references, it is called a thesaurus ( Landgridge , 1992).
The major bibliographic classification: schemes dealing with the nursing literature are implemented in computerized bibliographic database retrieval systems for nursing and medicine. Computerized bibliographic databases based on specialty-subject thesauri are available for many other reference disciplines of psychology, education, sociology, and so forth.
Access To Bibliographical Retrieving System
Access to bibliographic databases is either through a search service offered by the primary developer of the classification system or is licensed for use by bibliographic retrieval services that provide access to multiple bibliographic databases. Fees for such services vary considerably.
Bibliographical Retrieving System As A Distinct
A bibliographic retrieval system is a special type of information retrieval system. The information that is stored (and retrieved) provides citations of documents represented in the system.
Citations commonly include the article author, title, and the exact location of the article (the title of the journal in which it is published, journal volume and issue number, and pages).
Other document types (books, videos, etc.), if incorporated in the system, have descriptors appropriate for that document type. Other data that help to locate a specific document-for example, accession number and author address-will be added to the database by the producer of the system. Abstracts are usually included.
Computerized Bibliographical Retrieving System And Components
Computerized bibliographic retrieval systems have three components:
(a) the classification system for the field of knowledge (subject headings, thesaurus, controlled vocabulary).
(b) a database of documents indexed with the controlled vocabulary of the classification system.
(c) the retrieval system search engine (software).
The quality of retrieval is a function of all three elements. The controlled vocabulary must adequately represent the literature in the field. Terms from the controlled vocabulary must be accurately assigned to the documents in the field.
The search software logic with which searches are done facilitates certain types of searches and hinders others, thereby affecting the quality of the retrieval.
Data Base Of Nursing Bibliographical Retrieving System
Nursing has long been dissatisfied with bibliographic databases that index the nursing literature. In part, this is because the vocabulary used by major systems has not satisfactorily reflected nursing terminology.
Systems oriented towards
nursing literature overcome some of this difficulty by classifying things of
importance in nursing but not in medicine, such as nursing theoretical
frameworks.
Another
long-standing disappointment in the profession has been the inability to locate
nursing research by variables studied. This is because variable names are
sometimes so far out on the classification tree that they are usually not
suitable for subject headings.
This makes sense because variables usually represent the new nomenclature in a field. These new terms are frequently renamed or incorporated porated into another term or they may disappear altogether.
Vocabularies need more stability than is characteristic of research variable names. Because variable names are not always included in bibliographic classifications, articles are not indexed by the names of variables studied in the research.
The results section of research articles, where the variable names reside, is rarely used for assigning index terms (Horowitz, RS, & Fuller, 1982). The identification of variable names as keywords by researchers is of little use.
Currently, there is no way to tell whether an author identified term or a classifier-as-signed subject heading is a research variable name or just another topic the article is "about." It is fair to say that "aboutness" indexing has a serious impact on retrievals of interest to researchers (Weinberg, B. H.. 1987).
Nursing Research And Bibliographical Retrieving System
Research document representation in nursing-related databases is a problem for several reasons. First, if a controlled vocabulary is inadequate for any reason, indexers cannot assign terms to adequately represent documents. Second, research by nurses that is published outside the field may be in journals that are not indexed by the database developers in the domain.
Third, bibliographic data-bases are limited to the published research literature. Frequently, the published literature fails to adequately reflect the knowledge being generated in a field.
Cost of publishing and availability of reviewers limit the number of articles that can be published. Publication bias against small studies with nonsignificant findings and perhaps of parochial interest works against publication of clinical research in nursing.
With more focus on statistical meta-analysis strategies, these studies might be combined and thus yield valuable new knowledge. The consequence of large amounts of fugitive research lies not just in the invisibility of knowledge to the discipline but results in a significant waste of resources to duplicate work that has already been done or to identify work that needs to be done.
The strategy or "logic" that software uses to search databases determines how documents can be retrieved and how accurately the document set of interest can be retrieved. Although other search strategies are upcoming available, the primary search strategy used by bibliographic retrieval systems in nursing and related fields is based on Boolean logic.
The searcher must fully understand the logic used by
the search system and how it is implemented in the database of interest.
Boolean Login And Nursing Bibliographical Retrieving System
Boolean logic is based on set theory, which is a way of combining sets of things in this case, search terms in documents. The operators, called Boolean operators, dictate how the documents containing the terms will be combined.
The operator and causes all the documents containing one term, x, and all documents containing another search term, y, to be combined into the set of documents that contain both x and y. This set of documents is called the search result.
Operator Result Of System
The operator or results in a set of documents that have either the term x or y. It includes the set of documents that have both x and y. Other common operators are not, adjacent, includes, excludes, begins with.Operating Accuracy
Accuracy is a generic term that refers to the concepts of sensitivity and specificity of the search result. In Boolean search systems of bibliographic databases, sensitivity and specificity are inversely related: the search either results in many documents that are not relevant but includes most that are relevant or it results.
In addition to Boolean operators, common bibliographic database retrieval systems will have tags that identify other salient features of documents in the field; For example, the language the article is written in, document type, and whether the article is about humans or other animals. These characteristics can be used to further delimit a search.
Researchers are interested in scientific findings, not documents (Doyle, 1986; Weinberg, BH, 1987). All that can be obtained from a bibliographic database search is a list of citations of documents or perhaps the full text of some documents that may or may not contain research findings.
The accuracy of these searches can be extremely low, depending on the complexity of the search.The scientific knowledge is the research result or findings; however, bibliographic classification is done to organize the scientific knowledge produced after it has been embodied in documents ( Landgridge , 1992).
When viewed this way,
perhaps the results of research should not be part of a literature
classification system because the results are the knowledge, not the document
with the knowledge. Or perhaps this was and is the only legitimate method
available to library and information scientists when approaching the literature
of all disciplines.
Nonetheless,
research knowledge can be indexed by its variables (Graves, 1997; Weiner,
Stowe, Shirley, & Gilman, 1981) and linked to its source (the researchers);
if published, the dissemination history of the study (bibliographic citations)
can be provided.
The Virginia Henderson International Nursing Library makes the nursing research that is in the Registry of Nursing Research accessible by directly indexing the studies by variable names as well as by researcher and by subject headings (see "The Virginia Henderson International Nursing Library").
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