Competency 9: Internet

Using Google's search engine, I searched the terms "school librarian." Despite my topic concerning the role school libraries play in academic achievement, I chose the American Association of School Librarians' (AASL) website because this is the type of library I plan to work in.

AASL is a significant organization for school librarians because it stresses the obligations and responsibilities of one's profession. The following is the organization's mission statement and goals:

AASL Mission & Goals

Mission

The mission of the American Association of School Librarians is to advocate excellence, facilitate change, and develop leaders in the school library media field.

Goals

AASL works to ensure that all members of the school library media field collaborate to:

• provide leadership in the total education program
• participate as active partners in the teaching/learning process
• connect learners with ideas and information, and
• prepare students for life-long learning, informed decision-making, a love of reading, and the use of information-technologies.
  

Competency 8: Research Visual

This chart shows the working relationship between librarians and teachers. The more involvement there is between the two professionals the better students will perform academically. This research suggests librarians are pivotal to schools and thus should be included in the designing and instruction of the curriculum.

Copyright Information: Montiel, P. (2005). Toward a theory of collaboration for teachers and librarians. Retrieved March 29, 2009 from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aaslarchive/aaslbucket/slmr/vol8theory.cfm

Competency 7: Image

I chose this image from American Association of School Librarians because it represents the needed collaboration among school employees to improve their students' academic achievement. Most importantly, this model shows that this outcome can only be achieved if principals recognize the importance of librarians' involvement with teachers in designing the curriculum.

Copyright Information: Montiel, P. (2005). Toward a theory of collaboration for teachers and librarians. Retrieved March 29, 2009 from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aaslarchive/aaslbucket/slmr/vol8theory.cfm

Competency 6d: Specific Facet First

Database: Project MUSE

Believing this would give me the fewest results, I searched the first facet: school library OR school library media centers. After this, I performed a quick test and got 26,688 results for the second facet: Academic achievement OR student learning OR student success. Although this was not one of my original sets, a third set was added with quotations around each of the terms in the first set. This was done because Project MUSE returned documents with either of the terms "school" and "library" in them but not the term "school library." Because none of these sets were helpful and needed to be more specific on what kind of articles I wanted, I added another set that combined the facets.

Set1: School librar* OR school library media center* = 17,760
Set2: Academic achieve* OR student learn* OR student success = 26,688
Set3: "School librar*" OR "school library media center*" = 12
Set 4: "School librar*" OR "school library media center*" AND "academic achieve*" = 12


Evalutation: At first, I thought that I could not find any articles discussing school libraries and student learning because both facets had not been combined. However, once combining these facets, I still could not find anything that pertained to what I was looking for. Project Muse interface is user-friendly, but I simply could not find anything that I was looking for. I would not recommend using this database, at least not for researching school libraries and academic success.

Competency 6c: Citation Pearl Growing

Database: ERIC/EBSCOhost

I used the known item from the last search strategy: The Impact of School Media Centers on Academic Achievement. After searching for this item in ERIC/EBSCOhost with the title field selected, I retrieved four hits with the same title. This document had the following terms indexed: Academic Achievement, Elementary Secondary Education, Learning Resources Centers, Librarians, Library Collections, Library Expenditures, Library Funding, Library Role, Library Services, Library Surveys, Media Specialists, Predictor Variables, School Libraries, Elementary Secondary Education.

I selected "library role," "school libraries," and "academic achievement" to build a better set or pearl. A total of 64 documents were returned. One article I found to be relevant and interesting was "School Media Centers as Instructional Resources. The Informed Educator Series" This article discusses how the most successful schools recognize the need for effective school libraries to increase student learning.

Evaluation: Since I already had a known item, searching for it ERIC/EBSCOhost was easy. Seeing the terms this item had indexed gave me a good idea of how to make my future search queries more specific if needed.

Competency 6b: Browsing Search Strategy

Database: WorldCat

For this search strategy, I decided not to incorporate the additional terms for each facet or any truncated terms to simulate a semi-directed browsing search. For the first facet, I simply typed in school libraries; for the second facet, I typed in academic achievement. However, I did limit the type to books and articles. A total of 276 results were retrieved, but many documents did not look too relevant; this could possibly be attributed to the lack of Boolean terms and lack of specific terms. The first hit The Impact of School Library Media Centers on Academic Achievement by Lance, Welborn, and Hamilton-Pennell (1993) contained relevant information to my search query.

Evaluation: I was reluctant in using WorldCat because its interface was not familiar to me. However, it was user-friendly, and I encountered no problems with utilizing a browsing search strategy.

Competency 6a: Building Block Search

Database: Academic Search Complete

Because the component facets have already been identified, identifying the terms for each facet was my second step.

Set 1: School library OR school media centers
Set 2: Academic achievement OR student learning OR academic success

Next, I truncated the terms library, centers, achievement, and learning to be able to retrieve all documents that included the different variations of the terms.

Revised Sets:

Set 1: School librar* OR school media center*
Set 2: Academic achieve* OR student learn* OR academic success


Using this method, I received 300 results. The article I retrieved was Valerie Edwards' 2008 "Making an Impact: The Pathway to Evidence." The abstract discusses how important school libraries are to students' learning and academic achievement.

Evaluation: Using the building block search strategy in the Academic Search Complete database was extremely easy. I was surprised by how many relevant hits I retrieved and can see that using the different truncated terms coupled with the OR Boolean term increased my recall. Overall, I feel that both this search strategy and database are useful and easy to use.

Competency 6: Databases

My search problem is:

• How do school libraries or school media centers impact students' academic success?

Component Facets:

1. School library
2. Academic achievement

Terms for Each Facet:

• School library, school library media center
• Academic achievement, student learning, academic success
  

Competency 5: Tagging/Indexing/Cataloging

Librarything tags: Advocacy(1) Authored works(1) education(1) learning(1) libraries(2) office(1) Pro(1) professional(1) research(1) school library(1) teaching(1)

Librarything Link: http://www.librarything.com/work/606512

The Impact of School Library Media Centers on Academic Achievement by Keith Curry Lance discusses different facets of school library media centers, and how they can have a positive effect on academic achievement. Several factors that are looked at include: collection size, staff, funding, the instructional role librarians provide, and the collaboration between librarians and teachers.

This book caught my attention because its research focuses on my area of interest: school libraries and how they effect academic achievement. I believe Lance's findings can provide insightful and practical approaches both school librarians and teachers can utilize to aid their students' academic success.

Competency 4: RSS Feed

The School Library Journal offers a wide variety of RSS feeds regarding school libraries. I added the feed, "K-8 News," which contains articles about interesting reads for students, interviews with authors, suggestions on ways to promote reading, etc. Because I intend to work in a school atmosphere, this RSS Feed will let me know which books are most interesting to young readers, as well as any current news in school libraries.

Competency 3: Podcasts

Using the search engine Google.com, I found a wonderful website titled Library Beat. This website showcases articles, video clips, and podcasts related to the world of school librarianship.

In the podcast, "Longshots #87 - Keith Curry Lance," Sarah Long interviews Keith Curry Lance on his research findings regarding the correlation of strong school libraries and higher test scores. This podcast can be found in the following URL: http://www.librarybeat.org/longshots/play/87

Lance explains how school libraries with longer hours, more staff, bigger collections, and more computers and funding receive higher scores on standardized tests. Interestingly, Lance also reported if school principals and teachers merely perceive having a good relationship with their school librarian, the school obtains higher test scores. This was explained because librarians, in these schools, were thought of as collaborators in the "design and delivery" of instruction. Here, librarians' role were considered as "fellow teachers," "curriculum designers," and "leaders."

Competency 2: Related Blog

Using the Yahoo blog directory, I found a blog written by a school librarian titled Teacher Librarian...adventures at an urban middle school.... The post I am focusing on is titled "School Librarians and Evidence-Based Practice." http://www.teacherlibrarian.org/2008_04_01_archive.html

I selected this particular blogger because she focuses on both serious and fun topics related to school libraries. In this particular blog post, she writes how studies suggest school libraries play an important role in students' academic success and voices her frustration because librarians constantly must validate their very existence.


Sometime it bothers me that we as teacher-librarians constantly have to prove our worth. So many studies have come out showing that school libraries have a positive influence on student learning. Why do we always have to justify our very existence? Rarely is there a study announcing that students learn more math when they attend a school that employs math teachers. Unfortunately, at least in California, school librarians are seen as "extra", and often the first to go when the inevitable budget crunch hits. It can be a bit depressing to be part of a profession where advocacy sometimes seems more pressing than our actual jobs.

Competency 1: Introduction

The immediate purpose of this blog is to fulfill the requirements of LS 5013 Information Storage and Retrieval. I plan to specialize in school librarianship and therefore will research issues pertaining to school libraries.

More specificially, I will focus on researching how school libraries impact student learning and academic achievement (i.e., literacy, test scores).