Book Companion:

Librarian's Guide to Online Searching

Suzanne S. Bell

Lecture Presentations

Lecture 1: Database Structure (Lecture1.htm or Lecture1.ppt)

As it says, "database lite" - a very introductory look, follows right along with chapter 1 in the book. Ends with a lead-in to the Database Record assignment (see Assignments).

Lecture 2: Searcher's Toolkit part 1

• 1a. Searcher's Toolkit Part 1 (Lecture2.htm or Lecture2.ppt)
  Again, follows right along with chapter 2...
• 2b. EBSCO MasterFILE Select (Lecture2_EBSCOMasterFile.htm or Lecture2_EBSCOMasterFile.ppt)
  First foray into a live database (PPT just gives a bit of structure for what to look for, some search examples - basically same as in the book). ProQuest Research would be fine for this part of the course too.

Lecture 3: Searcher's Toolkit Part 2

• 3a. Searcher's Toolkit Part 2 (Lecture3.htm or Lecture3.ppt)
  Finishes up this topic; same as chapter 3 in book.
• 3b. Library Literature from Wilson (Lecture3_LibraryLit.htm or Lecture3_LibraryLit.ppt)
  
  Jumps ahead to the "social science" databases of chapter 4; seems right to do this one early on, for a class of future librarians.

Lecture 4: Getting into Subject Databases

• 4a. PsycINFO on the OVID platform (Lecture4_PsycInfo.htm or Lecture4_PsycInfo.ppt)
• 4b. Web of Science (Lecture4_WOS.ppt)

This deviates somewhat from the text, rather than science and medicine it's science and psychology. But the students enjoyed and got more out of looking at PsycINFO than Medline; it was hard to resist. Feel free to do the right thing in your own classes!

Lecture 5: Review of the Reference Interview

• 5a. Reference Interview form (Lecture5_RefInterview_Form.doc)
• 5b. Sampler of Reference Questions (Lecture5_ref_questions_sampler.doc)

In this session we discussed the theory, and then did some live practice. I divided the class up into groups of 3, and each person would take turns in the various roles of librarian, patron, and "listener" - the third person listening and recording open and closed questions. If you are using a course management system such as BlackBoard, have everyone post questions to the discussion board in the week or weeks before this class. The questions can be used here and for the "search madness" session. The "Sampler" posted here is one classes' worth of such questions.

Lecture 6: Back to Subject Databases, and Bibliographic

• 6a. Humanities: America: History & Life (Lecture6_AmericaHist_Life.htm or Lecture6_AmericaHist_Life.ppt)
• 6b. Bibliographic: WorldCat (Lecture6_WorldCat.htm or Lecture6_WorldCat.ppt)

Lecture 7: Pause for Discussion and Thought

• 7a. Decisions in choosing which database to use (Lecture7_DB_choosing.htm or Lecture7_DB_choosing.ppt)
• 7b. Evaluating databases (Lecture7_DB_evaluation.htm or Lecture7_DB_evaluation.ppt)

Look at the Notes fields in these files for more on ways to present this material and make it more interactive (especially the "evaluating" lecture).

Lecture 8: Back to Live Databases

• 8. Finding numbers (data and statistics) rather than citations or books (Lecture8_Numbers.htm or Lecture8_Numbers.ppt
• 8a. Optional: Fact Checking Worksheet (Lecture8_FactCheckingWorksheet.doc)
  
  Description included in worksheet; an optional (but interesting) activity.

Lecture 9: Comparing Fee vs. Free

• 9. The Internet (Lecture9_Internet.htm or Lecture9_Internet.ppt)
• 9a. Search Engine Comparison Worksheet (Lecture9_SearchEngineSheet.doc)

You couldn't have an "online searching" course without talking about web searching, but it is so hard to keep up in this area - I long ago decided to leave it to the experts (who write their own books on the topic!), and that's why there's no chapter on this topic in the book. The information in this lecture tries to be very generic; if this helps you get started, great, but feel free to change, update, and use whatever search engines are the flavor of the moment.

Remaining Lectures

Rest of sessions are devoted to presentations, and looking at whatever is the latest technology. I don't have prepared materials (other than assignments) beyond this point; like to leave it loose.