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.