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.