To the library (database) Batman!

Librarian's Tip #1: DON'T PANIC

"Algorithms I trust. Boolean logic I trust. Beautiful women... they just mystify me."*
        - Zane Zaminski (Charlie Sheen), "The Arrival"

This entry, is about my first journey into the world of library databases to gather information for the assignment. I decided, that the first port of call would be the A+ database, as accessed through the QUT library portal (Press here to access QUT library via QUT portal. Databases are handy things, because they are usually organised by content: for example, a database on Psychology, Architecture, studies of the environment....this of course is handy, if you are looking for information related to a particular topic/area.

The reason for my selection of the A+ database, was that it covered the area of Education, included a "full text" option (so that further searches didn't need to be conducted working off of citations), and as well as covering Primary and High School it also covered Tertiary (which of course, is the area of my assignment!).

I found that the tool was very easy to understand and use straight away, on the right-hand side of the screen was an easy to understand and use search box.

My first search was the term "Guided Inquiry", just to see what came up. To ensure that the documents were recent, I limited the year search to 2000 through to 2010.

I also had a go at using the second search box, the "AND". Here, I typed in "university" - you can see from the "Recent Results" box at the bottom of the graphic, that there were 7 hits.

To "OR" on the side of caution

I had a play with the BOOLEAN operator "OR". For an "OR" search, I entered "inquiry learning" or "Kuhlthau" - the reason being, the database would pull up records that matched the general term "Guided inquiry", or made reference to the work of "Kuhthau" (Carol C. Kuhlthau, though the search would have pulled up anyone with the same surname - probably not a good search if the person was called "Smith" or "Jones"!!!). I know Kuhlthau has done lots of work in the Inquiry learning field, so there would be some overlap with the search term "inquiry learning", though the real strength of this is that it would pull up the work of Kuhlthau in areas other than the "inquiry learning" field - which may be of some use. Not a great application of the BOOLEAN operator, but I certainly get the gist of how this works. Have a look at my search below :)

Sorry, I forgot to mention that this search found 350 matching documents. This could be narrowed down by reducing the years to be searched.

To be or to "NOT" to be, that is the question...

Another useful BOOLEAN operator, I did a search on "inquiry learning" and NOT "primary school". This was to cull all the items that had a primary school focus or context (and there's a lot of them!), so that what was left over was more high school and tertiary in focus. Appeared to work a treat, though I ended up with a result of 222 items. Again, by changing the date range the number of items could be reduced.

The verdict

Overall, I found the A+ tool easy to use, and definately something useful that I'll use again. Found  a swag of good material for the assignment, which is definately a good thing! Got to love those BOOLEANS!

Stef

* From the website 'SciFi Quotes" - This is the bit you click to read the SCI-FI Quotes