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Book Companion:

Librarian's Guide to Online Searching

Suzanne S. Bell

In addition to the main weekly search assignments, materials used for a final exam, and descriptions of the major projects, this page offers a detailed course outline, an ice-breaker activity for the first class session, and a form that instructors might find useful for evaluating the presentations at the end of the course. All of these were used several times in my online searching course for the University of Buffalo's Rochester Extension program, so they should be fairly well debugged. The major projects are also described as "Exercises" for the appropriate chapters of the book, but the searching assignments were usually too long or detailed to fit easily into the book, so they are new (and quite different, in several cases). I hope you find them helpful.
Terms of Use: Feel free to download the course materials for personal or classroom use. Also, feel free to adapt, as desired, for your own class. But please do credit or cite Suzanne S. Bell. Any other use of this material is prohibited without permission. For permission for other uses contact webmaster@lu.com.
© 2007 Suzanne S. Bell. All rights reserved.

Course Outline

  1. A suggested Course Outline (SuggestedCourseOutline.doc)

    This was how I worked through the course; the order of the lecture notes and assignments is all based on this plan. I wanted to get the students into databases and do that intensely for a few weeks - but then break it up a bit (which explains why we didn't get to the reference interview until a good way along in the class - you might want to do that first). The "Presentations" referred to in the last few sessions are really the capstone activity of the course; when the tables are turned and the students do teaching sessions. (See also "Presentation comments form," below, and "Major Assignments" under Assignments.)

Assignments

  1. Database record assignment (DBrecord_Assignment.doc)

    1. Database record evaluation schema (DBrecord_eval_form.doc)

    The activity/assignment mentioned on the last slide of the first lecture. Seems very simple, but actually isn't (as indicated by my sense that I had to devise an evaluation form to hand back to the students with their graded assignment, to justify the grading). If needed, instructors, please feel free to contact me for an additional document on my evaluation system.

  2. Take Home Search #2 (Search2_salaries.doc)
    After Library Literature class
  3. Take Home Search #3 (Search3_citeORpsyc.doc)
    After Web of Science and PsycINFO class
  4. Take Home Search #4 (Search4_twinkle.doc)
    After humanities databases and WorldCat class
  5. Take Home Search #5 (Search5_numbers.doc)
    After the "numbers" databases class
  6. Take Home Search Exercise #6 (Search6_furryfriends.doc)
    7. A later-in-the-course search, requiring students to figure out two new databases and make their own choice of a third one.
  7. Final, Capstone Take Home Search #7 (Search7_Pilgrimage.doc)
  8. The Major Assignments (Major_Assignments.doc) Describes in detail the major writing and presentation assignments.
  9. Final Exam Materials
    1. Final Quiz (Final_quiz05.doc)
    2. Mysterious citation (mysterycitation.doc)
    3. Comparison of database results. (Compare_database_results.doc)

"Other" materials

Initial introduction activity (1stIntroCardinfo.doc)

At the first session, it was always fun to start by going in armed with 5x7 index cards in a variety of colors, having each student pick their favorite color, and then write out the answers to the questions listed here. I would then gather up the cards... and then give them out again (so every person has someone else's card, including the instructor). Pick someone to start. S/he introduces the person whose card s/he is holding. The person just introduced then does the same for the person whose card s/he is holding... and so on until everyone has been introduced by someone else. Sometimes the process runs into a dead end mid-way (a pair of people will get each other's cards, say) — but just start it again with someone else, it doesn't have to be perfect. It's a good ice-breaker, especially the last item ("something special/unique about you") — and is very useful throughout the course for the instructor. (It can provide useful mnemonic devices. I will always remember "Carol B- raises bulldogs," for example.)

Presentation comments form (Presentation_comments_form.doc)

At the other end of the course, for the presentations, here is a form that you may find useful. It helped me give an (almost) quantifiable structure/methodology to the presentation critiques, making it a fairer, level-playing-field process. If the categories seem odd, it's because I had strong ideas about the presentations (that I tried to make very clear from the beginning), e.g., you are NOT presenting to us, your classmates. You must pick an audience: a grade- or high school class, if you're going into school media, or a specific college-age class, or a group from the community, or a group of administrators... whatever is appropriate for the database you're presenting, and do the whole presentation in a style "true" to that audience. (See description in "Major Assignments" under Assignments.)