World Cat

How I Searched:

I did an advanced search with the terms "public libraries" and "communities" as my subject. I limited my search to the past five years, a non-juvenile audience, non-fiction content, book format and the English language. I get 97 results.

My Results:

My Best Result:

What I Learned, Content: 

Transforming Libraries,Building Communities: The Community-Centered Library is a book by Julie Biando Edwards, Melissa S. Robinson and Kelly Rae Unger. It uses real-life examples to show how any US library can become community-centered, no matter what their size, demographics or budget is.

What I Learned, Searching:

WorldCat is huge! If users don't make good use of their limiters in advanced searching, they will receive thousands of results. This can be overwhelming and frustrating. The more limiters you use, the more focused (and smaller!) your results will be.

Reflection:

I liked using WorldCat. It reminded me of my public library's OPAC, so it was familiar and easy for me to use. Even it it weren't familiar to me, I think I would have quickly picked up on how to use it. I like that it lets you know which nearby libraries have the item you are looking at. I'm not sure how it pinpoints your location, it had me located about 30 miles from where I actually was. But it was an easy fix. I think this feature has a lot of potential for someone who is doing research.

Reference:
WorldCat. 2014. WorldCat. https://www.worldcat.org/default.jsp

PubMed

My Search:

               I started out searching MeSH to get ideas on building my search. I find a term I like: ‘health education’. I start typing ‘public libraries’, but the search box suggests ‘public library’, so I use that term instead. I get 499 results, but as I scan through them, I don’t find any that seem relevant to my topic.

Then I see a box on the right side of the screen “Titles with your search terms”. Listed is an article that looks promising “Health Education in the Public Library”.

 I click on it and a new window opens. It seems like it is a good match until I see the date-October 1957. I want something a bit more recent. On the right, I see another useful box “Related Citations in PubMed”.

My Best Result:
  I select an article from 2004 ‘Helping the public ‘Discover Health’ in their local library. Providing health information in public libraries: A Partnership approach in Scotland.’

What I learned, Content:

This article discusses a program called ‘Discover Health’ which, an effort to bring health information to the public by putting informative leaflets in public libraries. The program also permitted patron access to the ‘People’s Network’ online. This program was successful in bringing health information to library patrons and resulted in an expansion to other locations.

What I learned, Searching:

               PubMed is a bit different from other databases users might be familiar with. The ‘extras’ on the sides of the search results page can be very useful. By making use of them, you might find something that fits what you are searching for, but might not have been returned in your original search.

Reflection:

               PubMed was different from the databases that I am used to searching and it took a couple of tries to get my search just right. I really liked what it offered. I’m not sure I would have found a good result-or one that I could understand!-if I hadn’t used the two boxes “Titles with your search terms” and “Related Citations in PubMed”. It made using PubMed easier and less confusing for me.

Resource:
Henry, E, L. Marley. "Helping the Public Discover Health in Their Local Library. Providing Health Information in Public Libraries: a Partnership Approach in Scotland." Health Information & Libraries Journal, no 1 vol 21 (2004) 27-32. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15186288.

PsychInfo

How I Searched:

I knew that ‘library’ and ‘public library’ would not be in PsychInfo’s Thesaurus, but I knew I could play around with the second part of my topic. I decided to do a search on how public libraries affect a person’s well being. I searched the thesaurus for ‘well being’ and found it immediately. A list of related terms is with the result as well, and I click on one I like: ‘Mental Health’. From here, I construct my search.

My Search:

My Results:

My Best Result:

What I learned, Content:

               I found an article called “The Public Library as Therapeutic Landscape: A Qualitative Case Study” by Liz Brewster. This article explores how a visit to a public library can be beneficial to patron’s mental health due to its qualities of openness, familiarity, tranquility and empowerment.

What I learned, Searching:

               I made good use of PsychInfo’s thesaurus. It was really helpful in translating what I knew I was looking for on the database into a term that would return relevant results. It is important to continue to narrow down your terms to find the one that is just right. If I had stuck with ‘well being’, I wouldn't have ended up doing my search with the term ‘mental health’.

Reflection:

               Searching PsychInfo for my blog topic was not something that I was looking forward to. I know very little about psychology. I was worried I wouldn’t find good results, especially since part of my search-public libraries-isn’t something commonly discussed in psychology. I was surprised at how easy I used PsychInfo. It wasn’t difficult to use and the thesaurus helped me find terms to use that I would not have come up with all on my own.

Resource:
EBSCOhost. 2014. PsychInfo. Denton, TX: Texas Women's University, TWU Libraries

JStor

How I searched:

               I started out with a very simple search: ((public libraries) AND (communities)). I had initially planned to expand or revise my search, but once I saw the results of my search, I decided to stick with the phrasing I had started with. However, since I got 278,258 results, I chose to limit my search by looking for articles only and by searching for articles published within the last five years. I also unchecked the box ‘includes links to external content’. I got 9, 679 results. It’s still a big number, but I feel I can browse the first few pages and find some articles I like, especially since they are arranged by relevance The further I get away from the first page of results, the less relevant the results will be to my search.

My search:

My results:

My best result:

There were a lot of interesting results for my search. The one that jumps out at me is an article from The Library Quarterly Journal called “Including the Culturally Excluded and Socially Forgotten: Information Services for Spanish Migrant Workers in the United States”.

What I learned, Content:

There are over 2 million seasonal migrant farm workers in the U.S. This article discusses the information needs of these workers and how public libraries can meet the needs of migrant workers in their communities. The best way for libraries to do this is to come to the migrant workers, not wait for the migrant workers to come to them.

What I learned, Searching:

               Make good use of limiters! My first search, done with no limiters, had a massive number of results. It would have been overwhelming if I had to go through them all. By using limiters, I was able to make the search results much smaller!

Reflection:

I liked how easy it was to search JStor. My use of search terms returned relevant results. I appreciated not having to dig through a thesaurus to find the database’s preferred terms.  I feel like I probably could have made better use of JStor’s limiters. I did not want to use the ‘Narrow by Discipline And/Or Publication Type’ feature because I was worried I might miss out on a good result. Looking back, I think I could have easily excluded things like “aquatic sciences’ and ‘paleontology’ without harming my results.

Resource:

JSTOR. 2014. JSTOR. Denton, TX: Texas Woman's University, TWU Libraries