Competency 6: Successive Facet on WorldCat

Search 3 of 4

For this search, I decided on WorldCat and used the successive facet search. I had tried, to no avail, using Project Muse for this search originally. I realized that WorldCat would be a better database for the search.

Naive Question: I'm writing a paper on Emily Dickinson and her contemporaries. Can you help me?

The facets I chose to explore using World Cat's subject search were:
Dickinson, Emily - 5,316 results
Contemporaries - 3,443 results
American women poets - 3.075 results
Peers - 299

My subject search was: Dickinson, Emily AND contemporaries.
This resulted in 20 records. Below are the citations that I would provide to the patron.

Citations:
Dobson, J. (1989). Dickinson and the strategies of reticence: The woman writer in nineteenth-century america. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Petrino, E.A. (1998). Emily Dickinson and her contemporaries: Women's verse in america, 1820-1885. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.

Bain, R. (1996). Whitman's & Dickinson's contemporaries: An anthology of their verse. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Garbowsky, M.M. (1979). Emily Dickinson's literary community. Thesis: Drew University. Retrieved from WorldCat Database.

Reflection:
WorldCat was a much more appropriate database for my search query than Project Muse. This yielded more search results from which to select titles from. These are book titles that the patron could hopefully check out from the library. I was relieved to see better results on this database after many frustrations and lack of results on other databases.

Competency 6: Specific Facet First on JStor

Searching 4 of 4

For the fourth searching task, I chose to use specific facet with JStor.

Naive Question: "I'm doing a study on teacher preparation programs and their implications and effects on teacher quality. Can you help me find some research on this?"

Facet 1: teacher preparation programs. I used the 'full-text' default search option since there are no subject headings. I located the following records for my facet and synonyms:
"teacher preparation programs" (1051 records)
"teacher training" (23555 records)
"teacher certification" (2188 records)
"student teachers" (5240 records)

Facet 2: teacher quality
"teacher quality" (1126 records)
"teacher effectiveness" (1903 records)
"quality teachers" (505)

For my specific facets, I chose to use "quality teachers" AND "teacher preparation programs" for my first search using the 'full-text' default. I retrieved 39 hits. Several of which are relevant or worth perusing:

Citations:
Zientek, L.R. (Dec. 2007). Preparing high-quality teachers: Views from the classroom. American Educational Research Journal, 44 (4), 959-1001.

Boyd, D., Goldhaber, D., Lankford, H., & Wyckoff, J. (Spring 2007). The effect of certification and preparation on teacher quality. The Future of Children, 17 (1), 45-68.

Bain, C. (May 2004). Today's student teachers: Prepared to teach versus suited to teach? Art Education, 57 (3), 42-47.

Hoffman, J.V. (Jan.-Mar. 2004). Review: Essay book review: Achieving the goal of a quality teacher of reading for every classroom: Divest, test, or invest? Reading Research Quarterly, 39 (1), 119-128.

I was happy with these results, but also wanted to see if I could have higher recall. I chose to conduct another search, only using subjects with higher individual results.

Second search (using 'full-text'): "teacher training" AND "teacher effectiveness"
Record retrieval was 534. This yielded a higher return, however once I started browsing, I noticed the results weren't as precise. The records in this search, at least on the first few pages, dealt with education training in other countries. If the patron wasn't concerned about country, then this would provide more records to sift through.

Reflection
After some unsuccessful attempts with this database, this search question seemed to work better than my previous tries. I was able to identify and explore more facets that also, when combined, produced desirable results. JStor seems to be an appropriate database to find articles within research journals that databases such as ERIC or WorldCat likely do not hold.

Competency 9: Internet

The website I selected is School Library Journal, which can be accessed here: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/.

I chose this site since it is specifically for school librarians, K-12. This is my area of interest and study. It is a wealth of information for school librarians of all levels. The site provides links to the print version of School Library Journal, as well as reviews of books and multimedia, articles that address library specific concerns, related blogs, and much more. Within each of the tab choices are more options for selecting links. It would be advantageous for school librarians to access this site on a regular basis to stay current on trends and issues that effect school libraries.

I found this website awhile back, actually, as I used it for articles for another class. I found it through searching Google using the phrase "school libraries."

Competency 8: Research Visual Multimedia

This data image is from Library Jobline, a service of Library Research Services which is a branch of the Colorado State Library. The graph depicts the percentage of available jobs by type of library. I was interested in this particular information since I am pursuing my School Library Certification. There are many more job opportunities in the public library sector than the the school library sector, at least in Colorado. I am curious if the statistics for Colorado are representative of other states and how Texas compares with job availability, especially where school libraries are concerned.

Source:

Helgren, J. (30 March 2010). Fast Facts - More job seekers, fewer jobs: Findings from library jobline, year three. [PDF document]. Retrieved from Library Research Service: Research and Statistics about Libraries:

http://www.lrs.org/news/2010/03/30/fast-facts-more-job-seekers-fewer-jobs/

Competency 7: Image

Will this be me in a few years in a school library?

I located this image by doing a Google image search of "print versus electronic books." I chose that topic because as a future school librarian, I am incredibly curious about the future of books. I wonder if many books will be replaced with electronic versions as they gain in popularity.

I selected this image because it is actually rather disturbing to me. I love books and can't imagine just discarding so many texts. There are significant advantages to non-print materials, and I imagine that more and more libraries, both public and school,will eventually begin discarding their print materials.

The image was obtained from the following source:

Mayer, A. (2009, September 11). Green benefits of print vs internet. Message and image posted to http://www.recycle.co.uk/blog/green-benefits-of-print-vs-internet/