Books in Print

I chose to continue my search using the same question I posed when completing my World Cat and ERIC searches. I wanted to see what other related information and articles were available for my topic because I am very interested in maintaining open communication with my classroom teachers. I want to plan library lessons that complement the curriculum being taught within the classroom. As a current teacher I am constantly team planning and sharing with my teaching partner and other grade levels through vertical teaming. One of my goals and hopefully strengths as a school librarian will be to use the library as an enrichment tool as well as a research tool for students to use as they extend what has been taught in the classroom.

Naïve Question: As a school librarian how can I improve teacher/librarian collaboration involving curriculum to academically benefit elementary students?

Key Terms/Facets	Teacher/librarian collaboration	Curriculum	Elementary students
My initial terms	Teamwork vertical teaming teacher/media specialist	academics lesson plans	PreK-6th grade primary students grade school
Thesaurus Terms (Subject Headings)	Libraries and students Libraries, children	Curriculum planning Curriculum planning and development	Primary/junior schools Children-books and reading

Keyword Searching Notes:

This keyword search took the longest out of all four database searches I have completed so far. My first subject heading search was teacher/librarian collaboration and my first results focused only on teachers and did not include librarians. So, I continued my search with librarian/teacher collaboration which resulted with libraries and students and librarians, children. I decided to complete a third search using media specialists which retrieved zero results. My second subject heading search for curriculum was successful in one search with the results including curriculum planning and curriculum planning and development. My final subject heading search for my third facet began with elementary students which gave me zero results. The second search using students came up with zero results also. I tried elementary as a keyword but the results did not address the question I am trying to answer. My fourth search using primary students gave me primary/junior schools. My final search using children gave me the results of children-books and reading and children's libraries.

I found my keyword search in Books in Print to be rather frustrating. There were not as many exact matches for words that related to my question. This searching process took a very long time and I found it was not a very productive search. I am hoping as I move on to my Boolean Search that I have better results.

Boolean Search:

Teacher/librarian collaboration AND	Curriculum AND	Elementary students
Libraries and students OR Libraries, children	Curriculum planning OR Curriculum planning and development	Primary/junior schools OR Children-books and reading OR Children's libraries

Boolean Statement:

(Libraries and students OR Libraries, children) AND (Curriculum planning OR Curriculum planning and development) AND (Primary/junior schools OR children-books and reading OR Children's libraries)

SS1: (Libraries and students OR Libraries, children) AND (Curriculum planning OR Curriculum planning and development) AND (Primary/junior schools OR children-books and reading OR Children's libraries) (all in subject field)

Results: no matches

Notes: Apparently I have too much information in my search and I need to narrow it down.

SS2: (Teacher/librarian collaboration) AND (Curriculum Planning OR Curriculum Development) AND (Primary/Junior schools) (all in subject field)

Results: No matches

Notes: My search is still too broad.

SS3: (Libraries) AND (Curriculum Planning) AND (elementary students) (all in subject field)

Results: No matches

Notes: I am not sure if I am still including too many subject headings. I am thinking about eliminating one facet.

SS4: (Librarian OR teacher) AND (Curriculum) (all in subject field)

Results: 575 records

Notes: Now, I am finally getting somewhere, but there are too many records and they are not really focused on my question. So, I need to be a little more specific to help eliminate some of the results.

SS5: (Librarian OR teacher) AND (Curriculum) AND (elementary) (all in subject field)

Results: 88 records

Notes: Yea, now I have eliminated almost 500 results, but I still wish I could have fewer records. After carefully examining most of the results I have noticed that most focus on teacher's curriculum in the classroom, not the library.

SS6: (Librarian OR teacher) AND (curriculum planning) AND (elementary) (all in subject field)

Results: 33 records

Notes: I am still struggling with records that do not mention library.

SS7: (library) AND (activities) AND (elementary) (all in subject field)

Results: 7 records

Notes: Whoo Hoo! I found some very useful books to jump start ideas when collaborating with teachers. These ideas will assist me when I am meeting with specific grade levels and attempting to align the grade level curriculum with library activities. The following book I found to be quite useful:

Keeling, J. (2005). Lesson plans for the busy librarian: a standards based approach for the elementary library media center, volume 2. United States: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated.

This database search was my most difficult and time consuming so far. I am wondering if my naïve question was not stated clear enough or maybe wasn't appropriate for this type of database.