Competency 5

I returned to my initial question of: How are school libraries tied to academic achievement for students?

I started with the Library Literature database. I used the same facets as before: school libraries and academic achievement.

Textwords	School Libraries	Academic Achievement
Thesaurus Results	*children's library services *libraries	*student achievement

I immediately recognized fewer options for subject searches with this database.  My own subject of “school libraries” had 152 records, and the thesaurus subject of “student achievement” had 4 records. So I decided to put my subject with Library Literature’s to see what I would get.

SS1:

(school libraries) AND (student achievement)

Records: 1

I wasn’t very satisfied with this result, so I thought I’d run a few more searches.

SS2:

(libraries) AND (student achievement)

Records: 1 (same as SS1)

Well, I got the same result as before, so I knew I needed to alter my search. I thought I would try using the “All-Smart Search” as opposed to the “subject” only search. So on to the next try.

SS3: (using All-Smart Search option)

(libraries) AND (student achievement)

Records: 125

This was more promising, though I would have to do a little more scanning of the titles and abstract to see if the matches really were relevant. At least I had more to choose from.

Citation: 

Farquharson, M. (2009).  The power of high quality school library programs. Teacher 

      Librarian, 36 (5), 85-6.

Books in Print

This database has a very different appearance than the other so far. I started with my own keywords to conduct my first subject search.

SS1:

(school libraries) AND (student achievement)

Records: 1

I noticed that the Bowker Subjects included my own subjects. I didn’t really notice any useful alternatives. So I decided to try a different search method.

SS2: I used the search option “keyword in subject” instead of just “subject.”

(school libraries) AND (student achievement)

Records: 1 (same as SS1)

I decided that perhaps having these two subjects together was severely limiting my results. So I figured I would try using just one.

SS3:

(school libraries) as a “Subject”

Records: 760

This obviously yielded a higher return, however it would take a while to sift through the results and see if there were any that I would use. I did find a few that I though would be relevant to my study.

Citations:

Donham, J. (2008). Enhancing teaching and learning: A leadership guide for school library   

       media specialists. United States: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.

Harada, V. H., & Zmuda, A. (2008). Librarians as learning specialists: Meeting the learning 

       imperative for the 21^st century. United States: Libraries Unlimited, Inc.