Thursday, March 18, 2010

Competency 6: Pearl Growing on Library Literature

I started on Library Literature with my naive question: When making purchasing decisions in schools, should more money be allocated towards technology related materials than print materials?

The facet I started with to get my first source was "funds allocation." I used the thesaurus to locate subject words used in the controlled vocabulary. The thesaurus search retrieved the following subjects: Finance, Libraries/Finance - which had Budgets with 589 records. It said it was used for "allocation of funds" and "library budgets."

I used the 589 records hyperlink to see what records were there. I then narrowed that down by the "New Search by Subject" option. I chose "school libraries/finance," which had 232 records.

The source I chose to use as my "known source" to begin my pearl growing was: Farmer, L., et al., (2009 April). "School Library Journal's" spending survey. School Library Journal, 55 (4), 38-44.

The subject terms used from this source were: school libraries/finance, school libraries/statistics, School Library Journal.

SS1: school libraries AND finance AND acquisitions
*Ran as a "subject(s)" search and retrieved 8 records.
*Identified one that sounded promising:
"Schools spend less than ever on books." (December 1995). Library Association Record, 97, 644.

Subjects gleaned from browsing these records: budgets, tax campaigns, school libraries/acquisitions

SS2: school libraries AND budgets AND acquisitions (all used as subjects)
*Records: 1, but it was a great hit for what I was looking for. It was: Reference question. (Fall 2009). The School Librarian's Workshop (30) 2, 15.

Subjects identified with this source: Electronic reference books/ acquisitions; Reference books/acquisitions; School libraries/reference services.

SS3: school libraries AND electronic reference books AND acquisitions (all used as subjects)
*Records: 1 (same as previous search)

Reflection:
I was very satisfied with the pearl growing search method and the results I retrieved on Library Literature.


1 comment:

  1. Great job on your search! If you were looking for information to support your acquisitions decisions (rather than doing this as an exercise!) you might want to either 1) drop acquisitions as a term, and/or 2) try it as a tw, keeping the other two subjects to try to get more hits. I suggest the first as an option because acquisitions may be discussed but not necessarily chosen as an indexing term.

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