DIALOG

DIALOG had always been described to me as cumbersome, difficult to use and not worth the effort when other databases provide similar products without the hassle. However, I found DIALOG to be very intuitive (perhaps because of the ProQuest interface that has been placed on top of the content) and I was very pleased to find a great deal of information about my topic while searching this database. For this search, I was guided by the Online Information Retrieval Lab 2 and by using the Help features in DIAGLOG.

I conducted a command line search in DIALOG with “cybersecurity” in the title, “privacy” as a subject and limited my search to articles. I found this type of search to be much more useful that a standard keyword search. I was returned only 77 results, but they were all very specialized and very much on topic with my search project. I searched within the Telecommunications industry sector, which also helped to return very specific results.

The article that I found to be most interesting was titled “IS NIST Turning Weak Cybersecurity Standards Into Aggressive New Privacy Regulation?”

 What I Learned

Recalling information from my first search about cybersecurity, I was intrigued to find out more about the ways that the federal government is dealing with cybersecurity issues. NIST is the National Institute of Standards and Technology and is part of the United States Department of Commerce. This short article discussed how NIST is responding to calls for standardization in cybersecurity practices.

I definitely recommend spending the time to compose a good command line search, as I will discuss further in my Refecltion. Although it is not as intuitive for a beginner searcher, the results are definitely more useful and relevant. The command line search shows the true power of the DIALOG search database. 

Reflection

Easily the best thing about DIALOG is the ability to sort by industry. If you are searching for technical topic, the time saved by presorting your results to include only journals that publish in your field is incredible. While this does limit the number of results you are receiving (and as such, may not be ideal for someone writing a dissertation or other major research paper where more information is better), for a targeted search – such an undergraduate paper or a search based on personal interest – the industry sorting allowed by DIALOG is wonderful. I did spend a bit of time in the Help section of DIALOG simply because I had heard so many negative things about the searching in DIALOG from older colleagues. The Help section is very good and helped me to quickly put together an effective command line search.