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.