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.