Defining the consultation accurately

In the previous section, we said that the time invested in clearly defining and delimiting the information we need, why we need it and where we can find it is time well invested and that, very often, it saves time in the process spent searching for and finding information.

 

Before starting a search process, what we first need to do is to define our objective as specifically as possible. This means having a clear idea of what our information need is and this will enable us to design an optimum search strategy for each specific case and select the most suitable sources.

In this first phase, we need to ask ourselves questions, such as the amount of information that we would like to find, in which languages we would like to retrieve it, in which formats and, if we feel that our search needs to be mediatised by a search engine, decide what the terms should be that we will be using for the search, ensuring that they are sufficiently representative and provide an adequate definition to identify the information we need.

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