VOICES OF THE SEARCHERS
Agonizing Over Acronyms
by Marydee Ojala
Acronyms pose potential pitfalls for online searchers. One acronym may have multiple meanings, sometimes very far apart, but at other times, close enough to bring confusion to the search process and search results. Does ADA mean Americans With Disabilities Act or the American Dental Association? What about SME? Depending on the context, assuming you have actually been given enough context to make the determination, SME could be the subject matter expert within an organization or small- and medium-size enterprises. Perhaps that first SME is employed by the second SME.
Other acronyms have fallen out of favor or become obsolete due to circumstances. You rarely hear QC for quality circles anymore, and it only means Queen’s Counsel if the country has a queen, not a king. You might need to use the older acronym if your research includes a historical perspective. You also need to be aware of acronym drift, as one acronym can come to mean different things, depending on the time frame of your research.
Creativity can be a driving force for some acronyms. Take Microsoft’s New England Research & Development Center, aka NERD, for example. Librarians are also fond of acronyms. Just look at the CRAAP (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose) test to determine source reliability.
Acronyms can become so common, we no longer think of them as acronyms. They can also produce inadvertent redundancies. ATM stands for automated teller machines, not that most people remember that, but you hear people saying ATM machines, which means they’re looking for machines machines. Another issue with the ATM acronym is that banks don’t often use the job title teller anymore. Decades ago, tellers “told” out cash from their till. Now they’re generic bank employees.
Misunderstandings can cause hilarity among those who know the real meaning of the acronym. This is particularly true of text shortcuts. I actually know of someone who knew that LOL meant “laughing out loud,” but used it in speech, thinking it was an actual word. She pronounced it ‘lawl.’ That’s better than the person who thought it stood for “lots of love.” “Sorry to hear of the death of your loved one, LOL.” Oops.
Geography plays a role. A URL that ends in .ca does not denote California, it’s Canada. If you’re researching a natural language issue arising in the Netherlands, you’ve got two NLs to contend with. Whether the PSU you’re looking for is Penn State, Portland State, or Plymouth State can be inferred from geographical context. Acronyms reflect the language of the area. In English, the acronym for artificial intelligence is AI, but in French, it’s IA, for information artificielle. That’s confusing, since IA in English stands for information architecture.
As language evolves and phrases go in and out of common usage, two main issues affect online searchers. The first is clarifying what is meant by the acronym. This is reference interview 101. You’re asked about the implications of MCP. You’d better be sure that you are to research the technicalities of Model Context Protocol rather than the finances of Midtown Community Playhouse. Sometimes, you can infer which is the topic under consideration based on what you know about the requestor. Is this a computer geek or a theater buff? A problem could arise, however, if you realize that the computer geek is considering investing in a theater.
The second issue concerns where and how the acronym is most likely to appear. Scholarly literature and academic conference papers generally use both the acronym and the spelled-out words. Plus, controlled vocabulary in subscription databases almost always has you covered. If you’re looking at social media, there are no rules, and acronyms appearing as hashtags may not be accompanied by an explanation. You get to infer it from the context of the post, which could be geographic or topical. Capitalization could differ. In the U.S., acronyms appear as all caps, while in the U.K., they will have only the first letter capitalized. Thus, you’ll see NATO in the U.S. and Nato in the U.K. This discrepancy, however, rarely affects actual searching, and the disambiguation is up to the searcher. Overlaps between acronyms and common words could pose more of a problem. Search “cat,” and your results could confuse the feline with computer-assisted tomography.
Does generative AI (gen AI) help with acronym anxiety? Sometimes. Given its propensity to rely on pattern matching and predictions, however, it can confuse one acronym with another. Context for gen AI is often not the context a librarian would recognize and can mislead the unwary searcher. Awareness of context, multiple meanings, and acronym drift alleviates acronym anxiety. TTFN. |
