Searching Competency Two: WorldCat and Specific Facet First

Database: WorldCat

Search Strategy: Specific Facet First

Initial Question: What techniques are effective in developing successful book clubs for children?

Rationale: For the second of four searching competencies, I chose to use the WorldCat database, which I had used once in the past, but, was not highly familiar with. Using the same initial question I had on the first searching competency, I believed that there most likely would not be a high quantity of resources available on the topic. Having previously used the successive fractions strategy to search, and feeling that this method started out much too broad, I thought the specific facet first strategy would help narrow my results in a more timely fashion.

Key Terms/Facets:

Key Terms or Facets	techniques	book clubs	children
My Initial Terms	▪strategies ▪methods	▪literature circles ▪book discussion groups ▪literature clubs	▪kids ▪elementary students
WorldCat Thesaurus Terms	▪learning strategies	▪book clubs ▪library clubs	▪children ▪pre-teens ▪preadolescents ▪preteenagers ▪students ▪school children

I had difficulty finding WorldCat thesaurus terms to match the facet 'techniques.' The closest match I could produce was 'learning strategies,' though this really wasn't what I was looking for. I even went to an online thesaurus and used all the synonyms for techniques I could locate ('tactics,' 'systems,' 'approaches,' etc.), but none produced results in WorldCat.

Facet Retrieval Results:

I performed a Subject Search on each facet phrase to determine which facet produced the least number of results, as this would be my starting facet following the specific facet first strategy.

Facet Phrase Searched	Records Retrieved
learning strategies	1,982
(book clubs OR library clubs)	2,306
(children OR pre-teens OR preadolescents OR preteenagers OR students OR school children)	1,310,784

Narrowing the Search Results:

According to the specific facet first strategy, you should start with the most unique facet that produces the least number of results, and then add a second facet to produce more targeted results. You should continue gradually adding facets as needed to best match the needs of your initial question. In following this strategy, I completed the following succession of searches.

Search 1 (Subject Search):

(learning strategies)

Records Retrieved: 1,982

Reflection: The first time I ran the facet phrases, I was surprised that 'learning strategies' produced the least number of results, as I felt that the 'book clubs' facet was most unique. Not surprisingly, this search was much too broad to provide resources pertinent to my initial question.

Search 2 (Subject Search):

(learning strategies) AND (book clubs OR library clubs)

Records Retrieved: 0

Reflection: This search provided no results. The phrase 'learning strategies' continued to bother me as it was not a direct match for my original facet 'techniques.' I decided it was leading my search astray and chose to eliminate this facet during the next search.

Search 3 (Subject Search):

(book clubs OR library clubs)

Records Retrieved: 2,306

Reflection: In scanning through the first two pages of the records this search produced, there did seem to be a few pertinent results, however, they seemed more targeted towards adults, when my question was specifically about children. Following this logic, I believed that adding the 'children' facet to the 'book clubs' facet should produce more pertinent records.

Search 4 (Subject Search):

(book clubs OR library clubs) AND (children OR pre-teens OR preadolescents OR preteenagers OR students OR school children)

Records Retrieved: 192

Reflection: While this search still produced quite a few results, there were definitely much more pertinent resources scattered throughout. I was easily able to scan through each page of results and pick out the resources that would be useful in answering my initial question.

Pertinent Records Citations:

Criswell, P. K., & Douglass, A. (2007). The book club book. Middleton, WI: American Girl.

Daniels, Harvey. (2002). Literature circles: voice and choice in book clubs and reading groups. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Day, J. P. (2002). Moving forward with literature circles: How to plan, manage, and evaluate literature circles that deepen understanding and foster a love of reading. New York: Scholastic Professional Books.

Gelman, Judy, et al. (2007). The kids' book club book: Reading ideas, recipes, activities, and smart tips for organizing terrific kids' book clubs. New York, NY: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated.

Smith, L.J.H. (2004). The book bunch: Developing book clubs for beginning readers. Fort Atkinson, WI: Upstart Books.

Soltan, Rita. (2006). Reading raps: A book club guide for librarians, kids, and families. Westport, CN: Libraries Unlimited.

Conclusion: I was very pleased with the outcome of the specific facet first search strategy as well as the WorldCat database. This search produced the greatest number of pertinent results on my topic compared to any search I had completed in the past. While it took a little extra brainwork to determine that the 'learning strategies' facet was not an appropriate fit, once I eliminated this facet and followed the specific facet first approach, I was able to locate a good number of pertinent results. I will definitely use this strategy as well as the WorldCat website in the future.

Searching Competency One: ERIC/FirstSearch and Successive Fractions

Database: ERIC/FirstSearch

Search Strategy: Successive Fractions

Initial Question: What techniques are effective in developing successful book clubs for children?

Rationale: For the first of four searching competencies, I decided to begin with a database I was familiar with, ERIC/FirstSearch. After revising the initial question I had been using in the past, I looked through the search strategies available for use and chose the successive fractions strategy specifically because it is described as a good technique to use if you're not sure there are many resources available on the topic. Not having received many results on my previous searches with a question that was also related to book clubs for children, I felt that this would be a logical strategy to begin with.

Key Terms/Facets:

In previously searching for thesaurus terms on the ERIC database, I received no results with the facet 'book clubs,' so with this search, I separated 'book clubs' into two separate facets in order to receive results.

Key Terms or Facets	techniques	book	clubs	children
My Initial Terms	▪strategies	▪literature ▪text	▪groups	▪kids ▪elementary students
ERIC Thesaurus Terms	▪methods ▪teaching methods	▪literature ▪books ▪childrens literature ▪adolescent literature ▪reading materials	▪clubs ▪youth clubs ▪peer groups	▪adolescents ▪elementary school students ▪youth

Facet Retrieval Results:

I performed a Subject Search on each facet phrase to determine which facet produced the greatest number of results, as this would be my starting facet following the successive fractions strategy.

Facet Phrase Searched	Records Retrieved
(methods OR teaching methods)	169, 082
(literature OR books OR childrens literature OR adolescent literature OR reading materials)	60, 896
(clubs OR youth clubs OR peer groups)	4,293
(adolescents OR elementary school students OR youth)	86, 594

Narrowing the Search Results:

According to the successive fractions strategy, you should start with the facet that produces the largest number of results, and then narrow by adding a second facet. You should continue gradually adding unique facets to refine the search results. In following this strategy, I completed the following succession of searches.

Search 1 (Subject Search):

(methods OR teaching methods) AND (adolescents OR elementary school students OR youth)

Records Retrieved: 7,154

Reflection: This search was overwhelmingly broad and produced more results than could be scanned through. Basically, any record related to teaching elementary school was retrieved by this search, and the search obviously needed to be refined to produce more pertinent results.

Search 2 (Subject Search):

(methods OR teaching methods) AND (adolescents OR elementary school students OR youth) AND (literature OR books OR childrens literature OR adolescent literature OR reading materials)

Records Retrieved: 413

Reflection: This search produced results that were greatly narrowed from the first search, but was still too broad to retrieve resources pertinent to my initial question. The records retrieved through this search primarily focused on teaching reading to elementary students, which was still not exactly what I was looking for.

Search 3 (Subject Search):

(methods OR teaching methods) AND (adolescents OR elementary school students OR youth) AND (literature OR books OR childrens literature OR adolescent literature OR reading materials) AND (clubs OR youth clubs OR peer groups)

Records Retrieved: 3

Reflection: Though this search produced the fewest results, all three results were pertinent to the initial question. While each resource focused on a different elementary school student demographic rather than children in general, they all had information and techniques on establishing successful book clubs, which would be useful gathering information on my initial question.

Pertinent Records Citations:

Center for the Learning and Teaching of Elementary Subjects, Institute for Research on Teaching. (1992). Moving literature-based instruction into the special education setting: A book club with nontraditional learners. East Lansing, MI: Goatley, V.J., & Raphael, T.E.

McMahon, S., & Goatley, V.J. (1995). Fifth graders helping peers discuss texts in student-led groups. Journal of Educational Research, 89(1), 23 - 24.

Wallace Foundation. (2009). Effective and promising summer learning programs and approaches for economically-disadvantaged children and youth: A white paper for the Wallace Foundation. New York, NY: Terzian, M., Moore, K.A., & Hamilton, K.

Conclusion: I found the successive fractions strategy useful in eventually producing a few pertinent results; however, it took several searches to narrow the retrieved records enough to find records pertaining to my initial question. If instead of beginning with the broadest facet and adding one facet on at a time, I had begun with several facets, the search would have gone much quicker and produced the same results. I do see how the successive fraction strategy could be useful in searching a subject that may not have many pertinent records available and I will definitely keep it in mind during future searching.

Module Five: LibraryLiterature and Books in Print Competency

For the LibraryLiterature and Books in Print database searches I used the same topic-related question I have used previously.

Question

How do you create a book club for students in an elementary school environment?

Key Terms/Facets

book club, students, elementary school

Key Terms or Facets	book club	students	elementary school
My Initial Terms	▪literature clubs ▪literature circles ▪book discussion groups	▪children ▪adolescents ▪pupils	▪primary school ▪grades k - 5
LibraryLiterature Thesaurus Terms	▪book clubs ▪book discussion groups ▪cooperation/book clubs ▪children's book clubs	▪children	▪school libraries/elementary schools
Books in Print Thesaurus Terms	▪book clubs ▪book clubs (discussion groups)	▪students ▪children	▪elementary schools

LibraryLiterature Search

In searching for thesaurus terms on the LibraryLiterature database, the facet 'book club' produced quite a few results, which was a pleasant surprise considering this is the face I usually have to revise. I did run into trouble with the facet 'students,' so I tried the key term 'children' which again produced no results. Considering the results for 'elementary school' and the single result of 'children's book clubs' under the facet 'book club,' I decided that these phrases would most likely produce resources focusing on elementary school students and that the facet 'students' was not necessary.

I used the Subject Search and input following Boolean statement to search for resources on this topic on the LibraryLiterature database:

(book clubs OR book discussion groups OR cooperation/book clubs OR children's book clubs) AND (children) AND (school libraries/elementary schools)

This search produced only one result; however, this result was exactly what I was looking for. The article, entitled How I Learned to Run a Really Popular Book Club (and What I Learned about Its Effect on Students' Reading Skills and Attitude), details an elementary school librarian's implementation of a voluntary book club in her school and how she made it successful. This article would definitely be pertinent to my needs and my initial question.

I went back and repeated the Subject Search to see if I could refine my Boolean statement to produce more results. I searched the following statement:

(book clubs OR book discussion groups OR cooperation/book clubs OR children's book clubs)

This search produced 323 records and when scanning through the results, I selected multiple resources that appeared they would be beneficial to my information needs. Two articles, Leading Book Discussions and Literature Circles in Library Class (which I had also located on my previous ERIC search), both piqued my interest and contained just the information I was looking for. This database search was the most encouraging of all the searches I had performed as it was the first time I found extremely pertinent results.

Citations

Hall, Suzanne. (2007). How I learned to run a really popular book club (and what I learned about its effect on students' reading skills and attitude). Teacher Librarian (35)1, 32 - 36.

Saricks, J. (2009). Leading book discussions. Booklist(106) 1, 37.

DeVault, N. (2009). Literature circles in library class. Library Media Connection (28)1, 24 - 25.

Books in Print Search

It took me quite awhile to discover how to search for facets on the Books in Print database. Ultimately, I went to the Browse button, selected Browse by Index: Subject (All), and was able to type in my initial facets to produce related results. The facets I used produced very few and mostly identical thesaurus terms.

I used the Subject (All) Search and entered the following Boolean statement:

(book clubs OR book clubs (discussion groups)) AND (students OR children) AND (elementary schools)

This search produced no results.

When pondering what search to try next, I thought about how my search for thesaurus terms had produced only identical results for 'students' and 'elementary schools,' but had produced at least one different result for 'book clubs.' I decided to limit my search to only the 'book club' and 'students' facets using the following Boolean statement:

(book clubs OR book clubs (discussion groups)) AND (students OR children)

This search resulted in 3 records, all of which were pertinent. One resource was focused on middle school students, but the other two, The Kids' Book Club Book: Reading Ideas, Recipes, Activities, and Smart Tips for Organizing Terrific Kids' Book Clubs and Reading for Themselves: How to Transform Adolescents into Lifelong Readers Through Out-of-Class Book Clubs, seemed like they would provide the exact information I was looking for. The Books in Print search was even more encouraging than the LibraryLiterature search. Both LibraryLiterature and Books in Print produced results were perfectly matched to my information needs.

Citations

Gelman, Judy, et al. (2007). The kids' book club book: Reading ideas, recipes, activities, and smart tips for organizing terrific kids' book clubs. New York, NY: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated.

Appleman, Deborah. (2006). Reading for themselves: How to transform adolescents into lifelong readers through out-of-class book clubs. United States: Heinemann.

Module Five: Tagging/Indexing

My primary area of interest in my future career as a librarian is implementing book discussion clubs in schools. As a fourth grade classroom teacher, I have used literature circles, which are a small-scale version of the formal book discussion groups I envision as a librarian. Using the librarything tag search option, I searched "literature circle," which produced the following tags:

adventure (130) animals (428) chapter book (281) children (700) children's (1,532) children's books (192) children's fiction (380) children's literature (718) classic (446) classics (223) diaries (159) dogs (272) drugs (220) fantasy (892) farm (165) fiction (3,208) friendship (322) historical fiction (211) humor (120) juvenile (313) juvenile fiction (233) kids (222) literature (127) museums (155) mystery (832) newbery (589) Newbery Honor (263) Newbery Medal (386) non-fiction (140) novel (251) own (240) paperback (135) pigs (258) read (607) realistic fiction (180) spiders (239) teen (120) YA (569) young adult (810)

The results of this tag search led me to several popular books in children's literature. I chose Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo, a book I have used in my own classroom as a literature circle selection. There is even a literature circle version of this book with discussion questions and activities to use throughout the novel study.

Upon further research, I found A Guide for Using Because of Winn-Dixie in the Classroom, a book published by Teacher Created Resources, which gives even more discussion questions and activities that could be easily used to develop an exciting book discussion club study for elementary school students. This publisher has many A Guide for Using in the Classroom books for all reading levels. These resources will be very helpful in developing a successful elementary school book club.

Module Four: ERIC/WorldCat Competency

A topic that is of extreme interest to me in my future career is how to get students excited about reading. As a school librarian, I would love to start voluntary book clubs where students can gather together and discuss literature. With this goal in mind, I chose a related question for the ERIC/WorldCat competency.

Question

How do you create a book club for students in an elementary school environment?

Key Terms/Facets

book club, students, elementary school

Key Terms or Facets	book club	students	elementary school
ERIC Thesaurus Terms	group discussion, peer groups, cooperative learning	elementary school students, children	elementary school, elementary school students, elementary education
WorldCat Thesaurus Terms	group reading, book clubs, library clubs	school children, children, students	elementary school environment, school environment, classroom environment

ERIC Search

In searching for thesaurus terms on the ERIC database, I ran into trouble with the facet ‘book clubs.’ None of my initial terms produced subject headings, so I had to try simply ‘discussion groups’ to produce results. The other two facets, ‘students’ and ‘elementary school’ produced similar and overlapping results. Following this, I refined my search to separate ‘book clubs’ into two separate facets and combined ‘elementary school students’ into one facet.

I searched the following Boolean statement to search for resources on this topic on the ERIC database:

(group discussion OR peer groups OR cooperative learning) AND (literature OR books OR reading) AND (elementary school OR elementary education OR elementary school students OR children)

This search produced 512 records. Of these records, one of the most relevant to my topic was Literature Circles in Library Class, which details an elementary librarian’s experiment in having fifth grade students participate in a literature circle each week in an attempt to expand the students’ pleasure in reading.

Citation: DeVault, Nancy. (2009). Literature circles in library class. Library Media Connection, (28)1, 24 - 25.

WorldCat Search

Unlike the trouble I ran into in searching ‘book clubs’ using the ERIC database, ‘book clubs’ did produce subject heading in WorldCat. When I searched for ‘students’ I received an overwhelming number of results, which caused me to narrow my search to ‘elementary students’ for a shorter, more specific list of terms.

I searched the following Boolean statement to search for resources on this topic on the WorldCat database:

(group reading OR book clubs OR library clubs) AND (school children OR children OR students) AND (elementary school environment OR school environment OR classroom environment)

This search produced no results and suggested I reduce the number of phrases used in order to receive better results.

I then searched the following Boolean statement:

(group reading OR book clubs OR library clubs) AND (elementary school students OR elementary school environment)

This search produced four records. While none of these four records seemed to match exactly what I was looking for, there appeared to be some information in Peer Tutoring in the Supplemental Reading Group that would assist me in my research.

Citation: West, Joyce Ann Griffin. (1981). Peer tutoring in the supplemental reading group. Dayton, Ohio.

Results

For my specific topic search, the ERIC database offered more relevant and accessible resources. All the resources offered through WorldCat were print resources that were not available in full-text online. The ERIC database provided many useful materials to answer my question and assist my research needs.

Module Four: RSS Feed

In searching for an RSS feed, I was looking for a way to stay updated on the latest in children's literature. As a future elementary school librarian, it is important to keep up to date on the most recent trends for elementary schools. This is why I chose the School Library Journal K - 8 News Feed. This feed regularly updates the happenings in literature and teaching trends targeted at students in elementary and middle school. This feed is an excellent resource for teachers and librarians.

Module Three: Podcast

As a future elementary school librarian, one of my goals is to inspire children not only read, but to explore their potential to write. One of the ways I intend to do this is by introducing students to the authors of some of their favorite books. Oftentimes literature takes on a whole new meaning when you hear how it was developed from the person who actually wrote it. While it may not always be possible to have authors come speak to students in person, a podcast interview is an excellent and cost effective alternative.

I located the following podcast through the Podnova search engine. Children's Book Radio offers a variety of podcasts created with educators, parents, and young people in mind. The following podcast features Newbery Award Winning Author Lois Lowry, who happened to be one of my favorite authors as a child.

Lois Lowry Interview

A podcast such as the one you just heard would be a wonderful way to delve deeper into literature with children. Through interviews such as these, the author's intent and creative process is described using his or her own words. This can allow children to think about literature in a whole new way and open their eyes to the world of writing.

Citation

Children's Book Radio. (2007). Children's book podcast childrensbookradio #25. Retrieved from http://www.podnova.com/channel/397363/episode/17/