ASC and the Specific Facet Search

In searching for information about youth library programs and their impact on the community around them, I wanted to use a database that I am really comfortable with so I can experiment a little with a new search strategy. I have used Academic Search Complete since high school, so I decided on using it for my search. Specific facet searching works a little bit like building block searching, but they use the most “unique” term first, to weed out any non-hit at the very beginning. It sounds like an interesting idea.

I did have a little hiccup however, because I did not know what term would be the most unique of the ones I had in my facets. I figured that “impact” would be the most unique of all the terms, so I started my search that way to see how it would work out.

Search 1: (impact OR effect) AND (youth service*) AND (public librar* OR librar*)

Wow, it actually worked pretty well. I certainly am getting the hang of this – I received 24 results. Just on a causal glance, it seems like most of the items retrieved would be fairly useable. That’s pretty decent, but I want to narrow it down a bit more, just to see how I can manipulate the search strategy. I decide to shift some words around and see if anything changes.

Search 2: (impact OR effect) AND (public librar* OR librar*) AND (youth service*)

Interesting – this time I still get 24 results and while some are the same, others are different, new to this search. I want to narrow this 24 down a bit, so I decided to include another term in the query.

Search 3: (impact OR effect) AND (public librar* OR librar*) AND (youth service*) AND (literacy)

Ok, this was a good one. I only had 9 in my final set and nearly all of them would have been of use to me. I actually found a particularly good article, one that was speaking exactly to the question I had in my mind.

Here is the article’s citation:
Huffman, C., & Rua, R. (2008). Measuring the Effectiveness of Homework Centers in Libraries. Children & Libraries: The Journal of the Association for Library Service to Children, 6(3), 25-29. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Overall, I think this exercise has shown me the more thoughtful I am when developing my search query, the more usable, useful information I will get back!