Competency Nine: Internet

Using Google, I located and chose the American Associations of School Librarians. This site has a lot to offer not only current school librarians, but students like me as well. There are links for continuing education classes and conferences for the veterans and resources for the school librarian students. The ALA and AASL's guidelines and standards along with explanations are provided too in addition to a section on current issues and trends specific to the school library. Finally, two online journals are available: Knowledge Quest and School Library Media Research, a peer reviewed journal.

I chose this site because as a student in the MLS program, this site offers a lot of resources for me. I was drawn to this site after locating the online journal, which looks to have a lot of interesting research articles. Rather than zone in on the journal, I wanted to see what else was available from the AASL/ALA and as stated above, there is a lot of useful information to be found.

Competency Eight: Research visual/Multimedia

This is not a clear image, but the chart is a rubric for forming research questions. Students cannot begin to research until they have defined the question they would like answered. As is often seen with my eighth graders, students have a difficult time forming a research question that is neither too broad or too narrow. This chart will help direct them in the right direction. As a teacher librarian, I can use a chart like this to guide my students.

Image resource:

Mueller, J. (2008, November) Assessing skill development. Figure 6.4. Library Media Connection, 27(3), 18-20. Retrieved August 5, 2009, from Education Research Complete database.

Competency Seven: Image

This image was located in the Google Images database using the search terms BANNED BOOKS. The image is from the Virginia Library Association's web page on a Banned Book Week contest. The image is a 'play' on the eye chart seen in the eye doctor's office; the difference is rather than a series of unpatterned letters, it sends a coherent message about the effects of banned books. I like this image because it is familiar to most students, but interesting enough for them to actually read it. I also like the message that it sends about banned books, not just that banning books is bad, but why. This could lead to some interesting conversations with my students.

Competency Six: Databases-Lexis and the Successive Fractions Approach

I started my search with the key term CENSORSHIP which netted more than 3000 hits.

Rather than bothering with that many hits, I edited my query. I added LIBRAR* and SCHOOL not PUBLIC, limited the publishing dates to the last two years and US publications only. I had to switch to natural language to get any results and when I did, my results were down to 425 total.

I decided to focus on censorship of books specifically, so I added BOOK* not INTERNET to the list, this only helped me discard 67 of the 425 hits. Looking at my search parameters, it struck me that I should add parentheses to clarify my search.

My final search query was: CENSORSHIP and LIBRAR* and (SCHOOL not PUBLIC) and (BOOK* not INTERNET) in US publications over the last two years. My search query pulled 83 newspaper articles about book censorship in school libraries between 2007 and 2009.

My search finally landed me with the following article, which is what I was looking for, but didn't know it.

As I was putting this blog together, I realized I did not make a notation as to where this article fell in the 83 hits I found so I recreated the search. What I found was that the system now kicked back 84 hits, but this article is no longer listed, although is was in the first 25 hits (the first page) when I performed the search originally. I also notices the order of the hits is altered.

If I had to conduct this search in a controlled vocabulary, it would have taken much longer to find my article, however this database allows the option of using natural language. There aren't as many limiters and expanders as there are in some other search engines, but this could be a plus in that I did not have to make as many choices.

As I am looking at my final search query, I notice directions not to use "wildcard characters such as ! and *" which I did since I did not see this notice before. Wondering if it would change my results, I removed the * from my query and ironic thing is that instead of providing more results, which I expected, I received a message: No Documents Found.

It seems to me that this database has some difficulty in replicating query results and their own tips don't necessarily offer the best search techniques. I am not sure that I would recommend this database specifically.

Competency Six: Databases-Project Muse & the Citation Peral Growing Search

I started with an article titled Defense Tactics: Combating Censorship by Diane Chapman. I found this article entering the search terms SCHOOL and CENSORSHIP. This is the third article of 2201. I chose this article to start with because I am interested in combating censorship at my own school where I have personally seen two books banned from our campus.


I added BOOKS or INTERNET and increase my hits to over 1700.


Looking at the references for the above article, I came across the term FREE SPEECH and added it to my query terms. I am now up to almost 2700 hits.

For my final search, I added CHILDREN"S LITERATURE or YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE, also pulled from the resources listed for the original article. I know have over 7000 hits.


I'm not sure I understand the point of this particular search. It seems to me that I would be better served creating a building block search based on the key terms from the original article. I understand building up useful texts, but I think the building block technique would net me more useful documents than this search does.

Competency Six: Databases-LibLit & the Specific Facet Search

New search query: How does the semantic web compare to the world wide web and what implications does it have on the school library?

My facets are: semantic web, world wide web, implications, school library. Since I am looking more for information on the semantic web, I will use it as my specific facet.

My first search, using no delimiters, delivered only 43 records.



I continued by adding the next facet, world wide web, yielding 6 results. Using the Boolean operator OR to add the acronym WWW to the query added one additional hit.

Adding my third facet (which is to broad for a specific facet search), school library to the query yielded no results.

When removing the word school from the facet, I end up with three hits, 2 that are full text.

One of the three hits for this query:

Reflections:

I can see how using this search would be beneficial if your initial search, using all facets, yielded not enough or too many results, but if the search using all facets returns a decent amount of hits, I don't see the need to go through the exercise of ordering the facets from most specific to least.

In my particular query, my end result was three hits. If I wanted to widen my net, deciding which facets are of most importance would help me to eliminate the term(s) that is(are) hindering the search.

I can see myself using this particular kind of search in the research I am doing for a paper currently. It would help narrow down a seemingly overwhelming amount of hits.

Competency Six: Databases-ERIC & the Building Block Search

After thinking about what I wanted to know, I settled on "How are students using the library?" I started with the following keywords: student, use, and library. My initial search netted 5109 hits.
From these three, I created my sets : (student* or teen*) and (usage or utilize or use) and library. This search netted me 5687 hits.

In my third search, I added statistic* as a key term. I was looking specifically for numbers and I still had too many hits that were not relevant (many had to due with drug usage). My final search netted me 619 hits.

The first article ("The Not So Big High School Library...Why Build So Big?" by Stansil, George Ira, III) on this final list seems to provide the information that I am looking for:

Reflection: When I initially put in my key terms, I expected hits to be returned about library usage, I did not expect so many drug and health related articles. When adding additional terms, one needs to think about what exactly one is looking for. I needed to go back and rethink my original purpose. By adding the word statistics, because I wanted numbers, I narrowed my hits and found one that looks promising.

Note: I went back to see if I could find my final choice in my earlier results and it came up as number 7 in both search one and two. It moved to number one with search three.