Competency 6 - Database - Dialog - Building block

For the fourth database I used was Dialogweb.com. This website is a pay-per-minute database service. I went to the support section for the Gale Magazine database. According to the Dialogweb description the database contained the following.





"Gale Group Magazine DatabaseTM, File 47, is a unique general interest database that contains indexes, abstracts, and full-text records. Gale Group Magazine Database provides current and retrospective news from more than 400 popular magazines on such subjects as consumer behavior, media trends, popular culture, political opinion, leisure activities, and contemporary lifestyles. Gale Group Magazine Database also contains large collections of entertainment reviews and ratings of books, films, theater, concerts, hotels, and restaurants. This database is ideal for searchers who need background material and a variety of perspectives to supplement any business search. Gale Group Magazine Database includes indexes and abstracts for 400 publications and the full text for more than 250 magazines."





I searched for information about public school library finance or budget. I started with my first search criteria. I was receiving large numbers of results. I had to add several limiters to my search to help produce a smaller set of results. I tried the following limiters:


"/eng" for english only text


"/fulltext" for full text results


"/YYYY" for publication year ( this was an = only situation not <>)


"/short" for text less than 1,000 words





After using all of the limiters possible and all the search terms I still had a final search result of 61 hits. My first two results did contain my search criteria but the titles were not directly related to my search. The first was a book titled Fundamentals of Children's Services. The second was an article about the accomplishments of a mayor which included a reference to libraries.





The following screen captures show my final list of search strings, results, and cost of search.

My evaluation of this database was that it was very costly. For just about nine minutes of searching the cost was almost $17.00. One can only imagine what the cost of a search would be if you were unsure of your search criteria. The search was different because you did not see any result windows only result numbers. My goal was to reach a reasonable number of results to search for valid hits. I was focused on the number of hits my building blocks created during my search. I can see using this approach if money is not an object and one has also tried searching other databases so you have prior knowledge of the best search strings to be used with Dialog. The suggestion of looking at the bluesheets was helpful because it provided me with a listing of abbreviations and their meanings. This would not be a tool I would use with public school students due to monetary issues.

Competency 6 - Database- ASP - Citation Pearl Growing

The third database I chose to use was ASP. I used the citation pearl growing search to find information on public school library finance. I used this topic for the previous two database searches.

I started with an article by Marge Cox titled 10 tips for Budgeting from Library Media Connection, January 2008, Volume 26, Issue 4, pages 24-25. This article abstract listed several good tips for justifying budget expenses for libraries.

Then I used the Subject term : School library finance from the article listing as my first pearl. This led to a group of articles that were more closely related to my search criteria. However, there were also 145 results.

As the next pearl I used the subject term: library finance from an article within the 145 results and received 12 results. After adding this last pearl the results were less on school and more on libraries in general. I feel that the first results from the last pearl gave the most relevant results.

I found that the important part of this type of search was having a relevant article at the start of the search. I also found through trial and error and this type of search does not work well if your database does not support the journal from whence the article was originally published.

Competency 6-Databases-LibLit-Successive Fractions

I was looking for more information on elementary school library budgets. I chose to use the LibLit database from the Texas Woman's University library system. I had the following results.

S1 will be School libraries = 2853 results

S1 and finance = 72 results = S2

S2 and budget* = 23 results



When I tried different ways of wording my search I began with budget instead of finance. I did not get the type of results I needed. I noticed that the database suggested finance. I reworked the search and started with finance instead of budget. This produced a more successful search. I then narrowed my result by using budget with right-truncation. This way I would receive results for budgets, budgeting or budgeted.



The following screen captures show my final search and results.

The process of finding results in this way was positive. I was able to take a set of results and gradually add components to get to my final search. This process would work well for middle and high school age students in conducting reasearch. The process is a little complicated for elementary aged students.

Competency 6 - Databases - ERIC - building block

For this section of the database competency I chose to use ERIC and the building block search strategy. I was looking for information about budgeting in the public elementary school library. I created three sets to look for information.

Budget or expenses = s1
Library or libraries = s2
Elementary school or public school = s3
S1 and s2 and s3

I had 256 results for this search. The fifth entry appeared to contain information about school budgets. The first four hits contained valuable information about library resources they did not specifically mention budgets in the abstract.

The following screens show my search and results.








The building block search approach required an extensive vocabulary to make sure that one included terms that were similiar to obtain the best search result. This process would work well for high school level students and middle school students that showed a high level of vocabulary knowledge. This process would be overwhelming to elementary school students.

Competency 5 - Tagging/Indexing/Cataloging

I searched http://www.librarything.com/ for our textbook by Heting Chu. There were many tags already in use for this text. I chose to add the tag - school library. My focus for this course is school libraries. The database search information in our text will be useful for the middle and high school aged students to use during research.