On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:42:47 -0700, Stephen Black wrote: On 9 Sep 2008 at 12:17, Mike Palij wrote: >> NOTE: >> one can use books.google.com to search for headshrinker for >> publications in a time range; use the following string to identify >> publications that presumably have "headshrinker" in them: >> headshrinker date:1900-1950. >> >> However, a number of the sources that Google produces are >> rather obscure but it does reference the American Psychologist, >> page 264 in 1948. Examination of this issue through PsycArticles >> shows that it contains the program for the 1948 APA convention >> and a word search turns up no use of headshrinker, not on page >> 264 or anywhere else. One wonders why Google "thinks" that >> headshrinker should be there. If anyone has the time, perhaps >> one could examine the other sources to see if headshrinker is really >> in them or Google is providing false alarms. > >False alarms. I tried to warn people about this in a post last week on >using Google to search for articles of a particular date. But does anyone >listen? No-ooo.
What can I say? So many posts, so little time! ;-) >Google appears to provide plenty of hits to a specified early period in >Google Books. But this is an illusion, and they cannot be trusted. It >seems that Google treats journals as books. The date it provides >(actually 1946, not 1948 in Mike's example above) is usually the date of >the first issue of the journal, which in the case of AP, is 1946. So all >the hit indicates is that somewhere in this journal between its start in >1946 and presumably the present, someone used the word "headshrinker" To make things even stranger, I used Google after using PsycInfo and the earliest reference it gives is dated 1971 (this is searching for the term anywhere in the text). So, when Google books came up with AP, I was really surprised. But this raises a fundamental question: why does Google provide these false alarms? I wonder if there is a tag associated with an entry in Google database and some wag put in something like headshrinker for a publication obviously tied to psychology. You might ask your daughter to what extent the entries and materials are unique to Google (i.e., Google has entered and they are not available in any other database). With PsycInfo, Jstor and other databases, one can doublecheck what Google provides on wide variety of journals in psychology and the social sciences but it is less clear to me which databases to check for popular literature (though I have used a couple for periodicals). If it only appears only in Google, it raises real questions about whether one should bother to use it if it gives unreliable results. -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
