Competency #6 -- Database Searches -- Building Block Search with DIALOG

The Building Block search incorporates several facets related to my search query, which are then joined by the boolean operator "AND." To complete the Building Block search, I used DIALOG web, and more specifically, the Readers' Guide Abstracts Database, as it seemed to have articles that would be more relevant to my search query related to children's and young adult literature.

My first search facet was "award winner OR book award OR medal," which I typed as my first search command into DIALOG.



My second search facet was "adolescent OR children OR young people."

My third search facet was "school OR librar??? OR media center." Within this facet, I incorporated truncation so that the search might include the terms 'libraries' or 'librarian.'




To complete the building block search with all three facets, I entered the DIALOG search command "ss s4 AND s8 AND s12" which produced results based on the combination of all three of the individual facets searches incorporated into DIALOG.



The Building Block search produced 26 results.



The second article, "Greenwillow, Hyperion Win Newbery, Caldecott" found in Publishers Weekly, was highly relevant as the discussion focuses solely on award-winning literature. The author discusses two authors in particular, both of whom won book awards in 2005. With the discussion of other book award winners, this article would be very useful to school librarians who are seeking to include current award-winning books in their displays or in their libraries in general.



I liked the Building Block search strategy because it allowed for inclusion of related terms and synonyms within the same search, all joined together with the Boolean connector ‘AND.’ Thus, my search covered multiple angles, which allowed me to initially see a wide range of results produced. Additionally, I really liked using the DIALOG Web because of how it allowed me to see the number of results produced with each facet as I built up my search query. The search results were highly relevant, which made for a more engaging search experience, too.