Library Research Guided Exercise Part III: Search Strategies Answers

The first step to any searching task is to identify questions to be answered. In this case questions could be any of the following:
1. What is the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act of October 1992?
2. Who were the interested parties; what were the stakes involved with passing this Act?
3. How have the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams affected the Elwha River Watershed?
4. What is/are the actual plan(s) for removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams?
5. What has happened since this legislation was passed ... why are the dams still there?
6. How will the process of removing the dams affect the people living in the Olympic peninsula?
7. Etc., etc.
Let's take question #V: What has happened since this legislation was passed...why are the dams still there? First, consider what you/we know:
1. Are you familiar with this issue? ___whatever is accurate for you, but if you have done the earlier exercises this topic should be a little familiar___ if so, how did you learn about it?
2. Though we may need to investigate earlier information, what seems like the logical period of time we are interested in? ___1992-present___
3. How important would you expect newspapers to be in this search? __probably fairly important because of this being a public policy issue_ (1=not important to 5=very important)
4. Why does it help to know where these dams and the Elwha river are located (i.e. that they are in a National Park, etc.)?__among other things I might want to look at the park service website and other sources of government documents_____
5. Might the "politics" related to the removal of one of the dam be different from that of the other?___perhaps if one is more important to people downstream or to salmon______
6. Has enough time passed for books to have been written on this topic?___yes, popular works can be written overnight it seems, but 5+ years is enough time for a scholarly work as well._____
7. What do you know about the actual process of removing a dam? ___I don't, you may.______
8. Would this require an environmental impact statement (EIS)? ____My guess is yes, and it would be easy enough to see if one had been written.___
9. Could the technology associated with the task of removal itself explain part of the time lag? ____My guess is yes, but that is something I might want to research as well.__
As you have seen in our earlier exercises, most database searching (including general web searching) involves dealing with computer software in which search terms are taken VERY LITERALLY. So spend some time with the words you plan to use in your search.
1. What are the main concepts in the question: "Why are these dams (the Elwha and Glines Canyon) still there?"
  - Concept A: dams (specifically Elwha Dam OR Glines Canyon Dam)
  - Concept B: [dam] removal technologies and issues
2. When we search, we are looking for the shaded (blue) area, the intersection of these two concepts.
3. We may find, however, that in searching on concept A so few references appear that the terms from the concept B are not really needed.
4. We may also find that the only writing about these two dams relates directly to their removal (Concept B). For that reason, while it is essential to ask yourself the "what do I know" questions in advance of searching, the cardinal rules in beginning a search in a new database are START SIMPLE!, Don't give up! and Evaluate as you go.
5. Are there synonyms for the concept dam removal? If so, what are some of these:__decommissioning, breaching, dismantling?, modification?_
6. Are there synonyms for the Elwha or Glines Canyon Dams? _probably not though, in the context of dams, "Glines" may be sufficient for Glines Canyon.___
7. Are there [related] terms for these two dams which might be used in conjunction with the "dam removal" terms? _the rivers they are located on (if not the same) and/or the local community/town names might be useful in a search____
8. Are there words we could "truncate" using a wildcard ("*") without losing meaning? (e.g. the only problem with using "dam*" for "dam or dams" is that it will also pick up "damage, damages, damp", etc.) __decommissioning might be truncated to decommission*, removal to remov* and breaching to breach*___
As a preliminary search, try using EbscoHost's Newspaper Source. Use search strategy below.
```
(Elwha or Glines Canyon) in Default Fields
AND
(dam or dams) in Default Fields
AND 
(remov* or decommission* or breach*) in Default Fields
```
1. How many references do you get? __13___
2. Use the Refine search tab and Expanders to broaden your search to "search within the full text of articles."
3. How many references do you get now? __36__
4. See if you can find the list of publications indexed in Newspaper Source. Are the Seattle Times Oregonian, and Seattle Post-Intelligencer included and if so, how far back is the coverage for each?
  - Seattle Times? __Yes___ Years of coverage in Newspaper Source: __February 1997 to date__.
  - Seattle P-I? __No___ Years of coverage in Newspaper Source:__N/A__.
  - Oregonian? __Yes__Years of coverage in Newspaper Source:__September 1997 to date___.