Initial (naïve) question: How are school libraries tied to academic achievement for students?
I selected this topic since I am pursuing my degree to become a School Librarian. I am interested in learning how my work as an elementary librarian is influential and vital to the academic success of our students. Also of interest is how, as a librarian, I can assist teachers in meeting their academic goals for students. It seems that many teachers just view the school library as a place where they bring their students for the librarian to read them a story and then help them check books in/out. I desire to know how to play an integral role in the academic achievement of the students I serve.
The facets I extrapolated from my initial question were: school libraries and academic achievement. I used these phrases to conduct a thesaurus search on both ERIC and WorldCat. I’ll document those separately below.
ERIC
Facet 1: School Libraries
Thesaurus Subject Results:
*childrens libraries
*Learning Resource Centers
*Librarian Teacher Cooperation
*Media Specialists
Facet 2: Academic Achievement
Thesaurus Subject Results:
*academic success
*educational achievement
*scholastic achievement
*student achievement
*student improvement
I crafted my initial Boolean search statement with my textwords as a ‘subject’ search: (school libraries) AND (academic achievement).
SS1:
(school libraries) AND (academic achievement)
Records: 177
Identified alternative subject heading: Library Role from one record result.
Noted four seemingly relevant results based on my question.
SS2:
(library role) AND (academic success)
Records: 3
These records were not relevant for my search as they were related to higher education. My intended focus is elementary through high school.
SS3:
(librarian teacher cooperation) AND (student achievement)
Records: 10
Most results were relevant and could be possible sources of information.
Citation: Corey, L. (2002). The Role of the Library Media Specialist in Standards-Based Learning. Knowledge Quest. 31(2), 21-23.
WorldCat
I decided to start with the same facets as I did in ERIC in order to have a basis for comparison with different subject heading results.
Facet 1: School Libraries
Thesaurus Subject Results:
*libraries and schools
*elementary school libraries
*junior high school libraries
*middle school libraries
*high school libraries
*rural school libraries
*instructional materials centers
Facet 2: Academic Achievement
Thesaurus Subject Results:
*achievement, academic
*educational achievement
*scholastic achievement
*student achievement
*scholastic success
*prediction of student success
I noticed right away that the subject results from the thesaurus for ERIC and WorldCat differed greatly for “school libraries.” With ERIC, I seemed to get alternative names for libraries, whereas WorldCat offered specific libraries based on target audience.
As with ERIC, I conducted my first Boolean search using my textwords in order to make comparisons with search results.
SS1:
(school libraries) AND (academic achievement)
Records: 72 (far fewer then ERIC)
Alternative Subject Heading: libraries and education
Four results, which were all books, seemed relevant.
Citation: Farmer, L. S. J. (2003). Student success and library media programs: A systems approach to research and best practice. Englewood, Colo: Libraries Unlimited.
SS2:
(elementary school libraries) AND (student achievement)
Records: None
SS3:
(elementary school libraries) AND (scholastic success)
Records: None
SS4:
(libraries and education) AND (scholastic success)
Records: None
SS5:
(libraries) AND (education) AND (academic achievement)
Records: 37
Most of these results were repeated from SS1.
Conclusion
There were definite differences in subject headings between ERIC and WorldCat. There was a more significant variation where the textwords “school libraries” was concerned. There was little to no variance with “academic achievement.”
I also noticed that I got more ‘book’ results through WorldCat than ERIC. ERIC’s results were more journals and articles.
I retrieved satisfactory results from both databases with many records that I would actually be interested in accessing and reading. I found that my initial Boolean search statements yielded the best results overall, though I know it doesn’t always happen in that manner.
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