Clearly stating your information needs: seven key elements
For those who play a team sport, the boundaries of the field and the rules of the game are indispensable markers, enabling all players to share the same understanding of the mission. When it comes to document research and monitoring, it's the same thing. The only difference is that it's the team - customer and information specialist - who jointly define the boundaries of the playing field. Are you a customer? Here are seven key elements that will enable you to play a fully active role in expressing your information needs, and so prepare for the game with your partner, the information specialist.
1. Your needs in a single sentence
There's nothing better than a single sentence or question to state the purpose of your project, containing the essential elements of the topic and already guiding your choice of angle, keywords and sources.
Some examples:
- The first two were mentioned in the article on what’s the difference between information search and information watch :
o What are the best practices for promoting vaccination?
o What are the new approaches and practices in treatment and rehabilitation for long-standing cases of COVID?
- A third was presented by the Université du Québec à Montréal in its Infosphère portal [1]: « Comment se caractérisent les enjeux liés à la sécurité du transport des matières dangereuses sur le territoire québécois? »
- A fourth and final one presented by the INSPQ at an annual Public Health Day: « Discrimination des adolescents et des enfants atteints d’obésité » [2].
2. What is your purpose in requesting this research or watch?
Do you simply want to explore a topic? Do you need to know "everything" that has been published in the last ten years on a particular topic? Do you want to know who the leading experts in a field are, because you're about to attend an international conference? Is it necessary for your company to keep an eye on everything new that's published on an upcoming aspect of your business?
By sharing your objective with the information specialist who will carry out your research or watch mandate, you enable him or her to confirm the best angle of research, the most appropriate sources and the criteria for choosing information wisely.
3. What you already know about your topic
When you entrust your research or watch to Cogniges, you may already have read documents on the topic. The ones that seem most relevant to you can be an excellent starting point for gathering information: the authors are certainly experts in the field, the keywords they have chosen are as many paths to follow, the journal in which they appear may publish regularly on the topic.
Pointing out these references also enables a "snowball" effect: what works do these articles cite? In which works have these articles been reprinted?
4. The time frame you want to cover
When it comes to monitoring, the question of time is clear: you need to track only the most recent information, and you need to do so continuously for the duration of the mandate.
In terms of literature research, the question is more delicate. It depends on the nature of your topic and the objective you are pursuing: relevance must come first. And therefore, the period covered determines the volume of results you are likely to obtain.
5. The geographic and language coverage you consider essential
If your topic is health or law, you may want your research or monitoring to focus on countries whose health or legal systems are comparable to yours, so that the results are applicable and transferable.
What's more, even if English predominates in scientific publications, there are other languages present that you may not read: by specifying your markers, you run less risk of ending up with "noise" - superfluous, irrelevant documents - in the results delivered to you.
6. Vocabulary related to your topic
When you're interested in a topic, concepts come to mind: exploring this lexical field with your information specialist helps you delimit the contours of your topic, first in natural language.
The information specialist then takes over to transpose this natural language into keywords or descriptors, a controlled language used like syntax by databases to characterize documents and enable them to be located more efficiently.
7. Other elements depending on your topic
Other elements may be useful in defining your needs. Don't hesitate to indicate them. In some circles, customers are even invited to fill in, at least in part, what can sometimes be a very elaborate “bordereau de recherche” [3].
In short, the more details you can provide to pinpoint your needs, the better the information specialists will be able to tailor your deliverable. Upstream consultation is a winning investment, in information science as in team sports! And don't worry about confidentiality: at Cogniges, ethics are at the heart of everything we do.
References
[1] Université du Québec à Montréal. (2022). « Établir sa stratégie de recherche ». In Infosphère. https://infosphere.uqam.ca/rechercher-linformation/etablir-sa-strategie-recherche/
[2] Robert, O. et Drevon, E. (2011, November 30). Maîtriser l’information en santé à l’heure de l’infobésité [Presentation] Journées annuelles de santé publique (JASP), Montréal.
[3] Institut national de santé publique du Québec. (2023). Bordereau de recherche documentaire.