SEARCHING PROBLEM ON AIDING A HIGH
SCHOOL CLIENT WITH A RESEARCH PROJECT
by
KRISTIE REVICKI
A term project submitted to the
Graduate School – New Brunswick
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
Principles of Searching (17:610:530:02)
Prepared under the direction of
Prof. Stewart Mohr
New Brunswick, New Jersey
Last Updated: December 12, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
CASE STUDY OF AIDING A HIGH SCHOOL CLIENT WITH A RESEARCH PROJECT
Final Reflection
Between the two types of searching I engaged in for this project (that is, simply trying to guide the client along versus doing the entire search myself), it was much more satisfying to do the search myself. When suggesting things for the client, he did not always follow my advice. It proved to be very frustrating, because I would have to watch him execute poor searching practices without any strategy. And even though I would offer him helpful hints, he ignored them for the most part. Searching for the information on my own gave me more control and also allowed the search process to yield a better quality of results.
When the client and I sought information together, the first database selected was Academic Search Premier. After only two groupings of search terms, the client opted to change databases amidst my protests. It is for that very reason I decided to search only within Academic Search Premier. I find that to contain information comprehensible to high school students, having used it myself in high school. It also proved to be a very valuable source, as I found five sources as a result. To me, this suggests that proper searching strategies are all that stands between many patrons and the information they are looking for. This highlights how important librarians really are in the searching process, because the client was unable to find this information in the same database.
Sometimes librarians will be asked for help with topics they are uncomfortable with. We just have to get over it and help the client as best as we can without letting our own judgments or biases become involved, which is precisely what I had to do. Searching for a topic like pornography was certainly interesting, especially because I searched for this project in between client questions at the reference desk at work. I was very self-conscious about the fact that the screen would often say things such as pornography and rape in bold print every time someone walked by my terminal.
This project also brought the format the information is stored in to my attention, considering two of the documents are microfilm. If I needed to give the client the documents from the second search session, I am confident that he would not want to deal with microfilm. For patrons unused to this format, it is quite daunting. I was frightened of it myself until this fall. If the document I needed in high school or undergrad was only available through microfilm, I would try finding something else instead. Since it is a Rutgers microfilm, I would have had to turn it into a PDF for the client, as he cannot drive himself to New Brunswick. I feel that he would have taken the PDF, but if he had access the microfilm collection, I would imagine that he would be hesitant to tinker with the microfilm machinery.
If given the chance to complete this project again, I would try to take control of the search with the client more. Not necessarily in a forceful manner, but explain why the behaviors he is exhibiting are harmful for his ultimate goal of collecting information. I was rather nervous, so i was unable to properly express exactly why he should stick to one database and just try different iterations and search terms. I also did not want to come across pretentious, the way I have seen many graduate students encounter teenagers during my undergraduate education at Rutgers. Had I gotten over my nerves, I would have been able to better suit the client.
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When the client and I sought information together, the first database selected was Academic Search Premier. After only two groupings of search terms, the client opted to change databases amidst my protests. It is for that very reason I decided to search only within Academic Search Premier. I find that to contain information comprehensible to high school students, having used it myself in high school. It also proved to be a very valuable source, as I found five sources as a result. To me, this suggests that proper searching strategies are all that stands between many patrons and the information they are looking for. This highlights how important librarians really are in the searching process, because the client was unable to find this information in the same database.
Sometimes librarians will be asked for help with topics they are uncomfortable with. We just have to get over it and help the client as best as we can without letting our own judgments or biases become involved, which is precisely what I had to do. Searching for a topic like pornography was certainly interesting, especially because I searched for this project in between client questions at the reference desk at work. I was very self-conscious about the fact that the screen would often say things such as pornography and rape in bold print every time someone walked by my terminal.
This project also brought the format the information is stored in to my attention, considering two of the documents are microfilm. If I needed to give the client the documents from the second search session, I am confident that he would not want to deal with microfilm. For patrons unused to this format, it is quite daunting. I was frightened of it myself until this fall. If the document I needed in high school or undergrad was only available through microfilm, I would try finding something else instead. Since it is a Rutgers microfilm, I would have had to turn it into a PDF for the client, as he cannot drive himself to New Brunswick. I feel that he would have taken the PDF, but if he had access the microfilm collection, I would imagine that he would be hesitant to tinker with the microfilm machinery.
If given the chance to complete this project again, I would try to take control of the search with the client more. Not necessarily in a forceful manner, but explain why the behaviors he is exhibiting are harmful for his ultimate goal of collecting information. I was rather nervous, so i was unable to properly express exactly why he should stick to one database and just try different iterations and search terms. I also did not want to come across pretentious, the way I have seen many graduate students encounter teenagers during my undergraduate education at Rutgers. Had I gotten over my nerves, I would have been able to better suit the client.
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Application of Strategy
Despite expanding the term porn within Dialog info files, the only relevant term I was able to get was pornography. I then moved into Academic Search Premier with the truncated term porn*. Using the subject narrowers, I moved into Pornography and then even further into Editorials. The 9 records accumulated here were not fact driven and would not suit the purpose of the client's information need. This is understandable, considering the editorial limiter.
I revised my search so that it contained two truncated terms: porn* and violen*. I hoped that this would bring about either positive or negative combinations of the two terms. For the most part, it suggested that violence was related to pornographic exposure, but I was able to find some for my client's position that it is not harmful. I narrowed the original results by the subject heading sex crimes. Once in this subcategory, I altered the subgroup three times. The first time I chose sexual abuse victims and received three records. Of these three, only one had the potential to be helpful for my client. Even then, it does not convey his argument the strongest. I went back a level and chose civil rights instead of sexual abuse victims and found a total of two irrelevant hits. Lastly, I entered the rape subcategory and found five records. The record I found previously with the subject header sexual abuse victims was one of them. I also found two sources that are definitely helpful to my client.
I decided to attempt a more advanced searching language, by selecting the terms: porn* and sexual and (misconduct or deviance). This brought back 28 results. I narrowed them a total of three times to no avail. The narrowing subject terms that seemed relevant were: pornography, trials and child sexual abuse. The usage of the terms deviance and misconduct brought back mostly records involving child pornography and cases associated with that. While this would help the counterargument to my client's information need, it would not help him outright. Although, it was not a total loss because I found a new word that is fun to say: plethysmograph.
Even though the client's natural language question to answer is whether or not pornography is harmful, using the actual term harmful (or in the case of my actual search, a truncated version of harm*) did not yield relevant results when combined with porn*. The initial search brought back a narrowed subject option of pornography--law and legislation which focused on censorship and the harm that befalls the constitution, instead of harming other human beings. I backtracked to the initial records pool to limit the results to pornography. Then I went into the internet subcategory and found several results detailing internet filters in relation to pornography, but nothing relevant.
In my final combination of terms from my search strategy, I combined porn* and sexual assault. The first record, while not relevant, mentioned the phrase "rape myth." This phrase has come up a number of times in my search and I think that it will be helpful to pursue further. EBSCOhost has a function that allows me to sift through the references the author cited and I decided to pursue this before continuing with my original search plan. This, however, was unsuccessful, as it brought back many communication journals discussing rape in the prime time, which is not my client's agenda. Further narrowing the subject by the once helpful term rape, I found an article that was exactly what I was looking for! Alas, I already found it in the first iteration. I decided to look through this article's references as I know that it is a helpful article already. Two of the references seemed to be helpful, but through EBSCO, I was unable to access them. I found them on Google Scholar, but was unable to access them there as well, since Rutgers does not subscribe to a database containing the articles. From Google Scholar, however, I learned that they are available from ERIC, which I can access, thanks to Dialog. I opened DialogWeb to begin the search.
Both articles were written by the same author, so I decided to search for the author instead of the titles or publications. The author's last name did not provide any results. I went back to the Google Scholar results, and found the Eric Document number. This brought back the exact record of what I was looking for. I decided to get the document number for the second article, and this also brought me the citation for the article. Another problem occurred once I displayed the results, as I could not access the body of the article. I was, however, able to read the abstracts and found they did not deal directly with pornography. I still believe these articles would be helpful for the paper and debate the client is required to complete, as it supplements the argument that pornography does not create the desire to perform sexual assault, by outlining what has been shown to be a positive correlation to rape.
I went onto IRIS to see if the journals are available in print format through Rutgers. Fortunately, they both are. I attempted to get them electronically, but since the articles are from the 1980s, that was not as successful. For one of the articles, ScienceDirect allowed me to read the abstract of the article online, but I was not important enough to be able to read the full text. Since both of these articles are available to me through Rutgers, this is not a major concern. However, since this is a hypothetical searching situation at this point I will not actually go through the microfilm and print them out. For the purposes of this assignment, I just need to know that I can.
Even though I have five articles, and the client only needed two, I would like to look into the concept of the rape myth. I returned to Academic Search Premier and used only those two words as my query. I was able to find articles detailing the rape myth by narrowing the pool further into attitude (psychology). The results would be beneficial in outlining what the rape myth is, but it may also be detrimental to the client's argument, and therefore, not relevant.
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I revised my search so that it contained two truncated terms: porn* and violen*. I hoped that this would bring about either positive or negative combinations of the two terms. For the most part, it suggested that violence was related to pornographic exposure, but I was able to find some for my client's position that it is not harmful. I narrowed the original results by the subject heading sex crimes. Once in this subcategory, I altered the subgroup three times. The first time I chose sexual abuse victims and received three records. Of these three, only one had the potential to be helpful for my client. Even then, it does not convey his argument the strongest. I went back a level and chose civil rights instead of sexual abuse victims and found a total of two irrelevant hits. Lastly, I entered the rape subcategory and found five records. The record I found previously with the subject header sexual abuse victims was one of them. I also found two sources that are definitely helpful to my client.
I decided to attempt a more advanced searching language, by selecting the terms: porn* and sexual and (misconduct or deviance). This brought back 28 results. I narrowed them a total of three times to no avail. The narrowing subject terms that seemed relevant were: pornography, trials and child sexual abuse. The usage of the terms deviance and misconduct brought back mostly records involving child pornography and cases associated with that. While this would help the counterargument to my client's information need, it would not help him outright. Although, it was not a total loss because I found a new word that is fun to say: plethysmograph.
Even though the client's natural language question to answer is whether or not pornography is harmful, using the actual term harmful (or in the case of my actual search, a truncated version of harm*) did not yield relevant results when combined with porn*. The initial search brought back a narrowed subject option of pornography--law and legislation which focused on censorship and the harm that befalls the constitution, instead of harming other human beings. I backtracked to the initial records pool to limit the results to pornography. Then I went into the internet subcategory and found several results detailing internet filters in relation to pornography, but nothing relevant.
In my final combination of terms from my search strategy, I combined porn* and sexual assault. The first record, while not relevant, mentioned the phrase "rape myth." This phrase has come up a number of times in my search and I think that it will be helpful to pursue further. EBSCOhost has a function that allows me to sift through the references the author cited and I decided to pursue this before continuing with my original search plan. This, however, was unsuccessful, as it brought back many communication journals discussing rape in the prime time, which is not my client's agenda. Further narrowing the subject by the once helpful term rape, I found an article that was exactly what I was looking for! Alas, I already found it in the first iteration. I decided to look through this article's references as I know that it is a helpful article already. Two of the references seemed to be helpful, but through EBSCO, I was unable to access them. I found them on Google Scholar, but was unable to access them there as well, since Rutgers does not subscribe to a database containing the articles. From Google Scholar, however, I learned that they are available from ERIC, which I can access, thanks to Dialog. I opened DialogWeb to begin the search.
Both articles were written by the same author, so I decided to search for the author instead of the titles or publications. The author's last name did not provide any results. I went back to the Google Scholar results, and found the Eric Document number. This brought back the exact record of what I was looking for. I decided to get the document number for the second article, and this also brought me the citation for the article. Another problem occurred once I displayed the results, as I could not access the body of the article. I was, however, able to read the abstracts and found they did not deal directly with pornography. I still believe these articles would be helpful for the paper and debate the client is required to complete, as it supplements the argument that pornography does not create the desire to perform sexual assault, by outlining what has been shown to be a positive correlation to rape.
I went onto IRIS to see if the journals are available in print format through Rutgers. Fortunately, they both are. I attempted to get them electronically, but since the articles are from the 1980s, that was not as successful. For one of the articles, ScienceDirect allowed me to read the abstract of the article online, but I was not important enough to be able to read the full text. Since both of these articles are available to me through Rutgers, this is not a major concern. However, since this is a hypothetical searching situation at this point I will not actually go through the microfilm and print them out. For the purposes of this assignment, I just need to know that I can.
Even though I have five articles, and the client only needed two, I would like to look into the concept of the rape myth. I returned to Academic Search Premier and used only those two words as my query. I was able to find articles detailing the rape myth by narrowing the pool further into attitude (psychology). The results would be beneficial in outlining what the rape myth is, but it may also be detrimental to the client's argument, and therefore, not relevant.
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Search Strategy
Search Topic
To find evidence supporting the following statement: Pornography is not harmful.
Database Selection
What are potential places for me to find information about pornography and the effects it has on the population?
To find evidence supporting the following statement: Pornography is not harmful.
Database Selection
What are potential places for me to find information about pornography and the effects it has on the population?
- Psychology databases
- Sociology databases
- Newspaper databases
Search terms
Ultimately, these are just my beginning words. I would like to take these and expand them inside Dialog's info files to gather more and potentially better ways of describing these concepts. Some of these came from using a regular thesaurus, but I feel it would be best to get more terms from the databases since it is the best reflection of how the authors utilize language within context.
- pornography/porn (porn*)
- violent/violence (violen*)
- sexual and (misconduct or deviance)
- rape or molestation
- harm*
- sexual and (abuse or assault)
- sexual based crimes
Search Steps
- Expand promising search terms within Infofiles to get a good preliminary base of search words. This will also let me see how specific words may be combined.
- Considering my client is a high school junior, I want to work within Academic Search Premier at first to get the most digestible materials for him. If there is something in this database, it would be ideal.
- If not enough materials are collected for him, I will move on to psychology and sociology oriented databases to get a more subject-oriented response.
- Ultimately, I hope to see what the first batch of results brings and then I will move through another iteration. Since I am using the University's databases that do not charge per record, cost is not a concern and I can do this.
- I am assuming that a lot of records that will come back are going to be on the opposing side. If this is the case, I will seek keywords from the articles to use after studying the language to best phrase the topic at hand.
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Reflection on Initial Search Stages
I found the main problem working with a high school student was his extreme need to put forth only minimal effort. I am hesitant to generalize an entire group of students based on my one interaction with my client, but have subsequently found that many people working with this age group agree on these findings. As such, I would be more inclined to gather preliminary materials in order to ensure that the articles selected by the client would be of the most relevance and accuracy. The client did not read a single thing beyond a light skimming of an abstract before recording the bibliographic text onto a source card, despite my urging that he at least make sure the source truly fits his need. I also gleaned that he would not be returning to the search outside of our initial encounter in the library.
Overall, it was very frustrating to watch someone do multiple things wrong (i.e., switching databases, not search terms; not evaluating sources; not returning to the search if the sources did not give exactly what one needs). As it is, I was working with a high school student on a research project. Therefore, the searching and selection is a part of his grade and would be unethical for a student enrolled in an accredited library school to complete that section of his assignment for him. However, I did offer simple suggestions, encouraging him to stick to one database for longer than a minute and to examine the sources. None of these suggestions were taken into consideration, which is extraordinarily frustrating. Yet another reason why I wish to explore a library career in an elementary school, not a high school.
Also, the virtual communications we shared on the internet left much to be desired. Even though children and teenagers are supposedly more adapt to these technologies, the conversation was hardly moving on his end. With a face to face interview, one is aware when the client's attention begins to drift. That is not the case with the virtual reference interview and is extraordinarily annoying if one wishes to focus solely on the problem at hand.
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Overall, it was very frustrating to watch someone do multiple things wrong (i.e., switching databases, not search terms; not evaluating sources; not returning to the search if the sources did not give exactly what one needs). As it is, I was working with a high school student on a research project. Therefore, the searching and selection is a part of his grade and would be unethical for a student enrolled in an accredited library school to complete that section of his assignment for him. However, I did offer simple suggestions, encouraging him to stick to one database for longer than a minute and to examine the sources. None of these suggestions were taken into consideration, which is extraordinarily frustrating. Yet another reason why I wish to explore a library career in an elementary school, not a high school.
Also, the virtual communications we shared on the internet left much to be desired. Even though children and teenagers are supposedly more adapt to these technologies, the conversation was hardly moving on his end. With a face to face interview, one is aware when the client's attention begins to drift. That is not the case with the virtual reference interview and is extraordinarily annoying if one wishes to focus solely on the problem at hand.
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Thursday, November 8, 2007
Progress Report
Thus far, my searching for this client seems to be done. I would have liked to get more information for him, but high schoolers are quite resistant to doing more than what is necessary to pass the assignment. As a result, I am going to do a mock-search as if I was working with an over-achiever and employ strategies and perhaps even use Dialog (Though, admittedly, high schoolers may not understand the materials generated from that database). It is my intention to finish this search over the Thanksgiving break and then work on my summation in the week following.
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