Module 3 (LSC 547) has been graded

Please read the comments.
Points 18/20

A. Explain the following ---

1. (2 points) QUEST

From your Module 3 Powerpoint presentation, "QUEST" is a mnemonic for key elements of the reference interview, arranged in descending order from the more important elements to the less important ones.

"Question" signifies the evaluating and summarizing of the user's original question, in order to define the topic of their query and clarify what is actually being asked.

"Use" defines how the information provided is going to be used (i.e. is the information going to be required to answer a simple question, write a brief paper, do research for a comprehensive term paper, etc.).

"Evaluate" determines what materials or content sources will meet the user's information needs and whether the quality of said sources will be acceptable in answering their question (i.e. books versus magazines versus newspapers etc.).

"Sources" determines how many sources (i.e. the quantity) will be needed to complete the reference interview.

"Timeframe" is the final step in the reference process, and is used to measure the importance of current versus retrospective coverage (i.e. to satisfy the user's needs, does the type of information need to be very recent, or can historical documents work?), as well as the actual timeframe in which the user is working with (is there a report that needs to be passed in by the next day, or does the user have the luxury of waiting a few weeks for things like interlibrary loan journals to arrive?).

2. (2 points) OpenURL

From your Module 3 Powerpoint presentation, "OpenURL" is an accepted syntax for describing an item using a dynamically created internet link, either by including metadata from the source material or by referencing a unique identifier.

With OpenURL, data is compiled from the source record (i.e. a cited item in a database), then a link server or resolver is needed to identify the proper syntax (i.e. rules of the institution are applied) in order to dynamically create a target URL which points users to services or information relevant to the original item (i.e. the full text targets as selected by the particular institution).

3. (2 points) Federated Search

From your Module 3 Powerpoint presentation, federated searching is a single search tool that can access all resources with a solitary easy-to-use interface; in other words, multiple information sources (library catalog, web sites, subscription databases, etc.) can be inspected by the user via a single search.

One of three major protocols (SRW/U query language; Z39.50 protocol; HTML screen scraping) can be used to accomplish the task of "transforming a query and broadcasting it to a group of disparate databases with the appropriate syntax, merging the results collected from the databases, presenting them in a succinct and unified format with minimal duplication, and allowing the library patron to sort the merged result set by various criteria."

A. Thesaurus Searches ---

1. (3 points) Define the following : broader term, related term, and narrower term.

A broader term refers to a general category that a particular item belongs to (i.e. "Dinosaur" is a broader term for "Velociraptor").

A narrower term refers to a more specific version of the item in question (i.e. "Reference Librarian" is a narrower term for "Library Staff").

A related term refers to the fact that two items can have some form of relationship with one another, while not falling specifically into the previous two categories ... For example, "Televisions" and "Television Broadcasting" are two terms that are obviously related to one another, and yet they still fall into two separate categories (i.e. "Television Broadcasting" is the act of transmitting images via radiowaves, while "Televisions" refers to the actual physical objects needed to receive those broadcasts). Therefore, "Televisions" is not a more general term for "Television Broadcasting" (or vice versa), nor is "Television Broadcasting" a more specific version of "Televisions" (or the other way around); they are both related terms to one another, i.e. a user who is searching for subjects that relate to "Television Broadcasting" may also - but not necessarily - be interested in other materials that refer specifically to the subject of "Televisions."

2. (1 point) Look up "autism" in Wilson's Eric Thesaurus. Provide a broader term, a narrower term, and a related term and look up "junk bonds" in Proquest's ABI/INFORM Complete Thesaurus. Provide a broader term, a narrower term, and a related term.

I visited the Thesaurus section of the ERIC website (http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/thesaurus/thesaurus.jsp) and entered the search term "autism."


The results page listed a single broader term ("Pervasive Developmental Disorders"), did not have any narrower terms ("n/a"), and featured several related terms (including "Anxiety Disorders").

Next, I moved onto the Thesaurus section of ABI/INFORM Complete (http://search.proquest.com/abicomplete/thesaurus/browsepage/$N/queryTermField/false/false) and entered the search term "junk bonds."


The results page listed two broader terms ("Bonds" and "Investments"), seven related terms (including "corporate debt" and "Eurobonds"), and zero narrower terms (although you could explode the other two categories to see their narrower terms, i.e. one of the narrower terms for "Bonds" is "Bond portfolios" and one of the narrower terms for "corporate debt" is "commercial paper").

B. Scavenger Hunt

(10 points) In this scavenger hunt, you will be free to use any database (even the internet) to provide an answer. The resriction: EACH of the following databases must have provided you with at least one of your answers: Lexis-Nexis, JSTOR, the HELIN Catalog, a Wilson Database, and an Ebsco database.

What you are looking for ---

1. Abortion is a hot issue. Which states have laws about restricting abortion?

This question sounds like a "current events" topic, so I started my search with Lexis Nexis and entered the keywords "states restricting abortion" (no quotation marks) under "Search the News". This produced a few results, but I discovered that I could use the "Find Documents with Similar Topics" option to narrow my initial search by keyword.

I selected "ABORTION", "US STATE GOVERNMENT", and "LEGISLATION" under the database's "Power Search" and sorted the results from newest to oldest ... This produced a list of 995 results, several of which provided relevant information to the initial query (including articles like "New laws in 6 U.S. states tighten the rules on abortion" by Erik Eckholm [The International Herald Tribune, June 28 2011] and "State bills are targeting abortion" by Judy Keen [USA Today, April 6 2011]).

2. Are men better at mathematics than women?

Using EBSCOHost's Academic Search Premier, I started off with the simple search "men AND women AND mathematics" (singling out the most relevant keywords from the user's question). This produced a list of 537 results, so I attempted to narrow things down by checking the "Subject: Thesaurus Term" option in the left-hand column. This revealed two promising candidates ("MATHEMATICS" and "SEX differences") so I used these to cut down the list to 108 results.

Most of the resulting articles seemed to focus on an imbalance between the sexes when it comes to work in the professional fields of mathematics (i.e. "Seeking Congruity Between Goals and Roles: A New Look at Why Women Opt Out of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Careers" by Amanda B. Diekman [Psychological Science, August 2010, Vol. 21 Issue 8, p. 1051-1057]), so perhaps the user's question can be answered by pointing to these studies and stating that there may be a perception that men are "better" at mathematics than women simply because those in the field aren't doing enough to encourage young females to actively pursue these disciplines as a career path (and if less women than men are moving forward in the field of mathematics, then it could give the appearance that men are "better" at it).

In addition, the article "Improving performance expectancies in stereotypic domains: task relevance and the reduction of stereotype threat" by Harriet Rosenthal (European Journal of Social Psychology, May/June 2007, Vol. 37 Issue 3, p. 586-597) included the subject heading "MATHEMATICAL ability -- Sex differences"; this sounded promising, so I conducted a new search with that subject and received a list of 143 results, including some very promising candidates (such as "Sex differences in the relation between math performance, spatial skills, and attitudes" by C.M. Ganley [Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, July 2011, Vol. 32 Issue 4, p. 235-242], "Gender and Mathematical Ability" by Richard York [Monthly Review, November 2007, Vol. 59 Issue 6, p. 7-15], and "A comparison of performance and attitudes in mathematics amongst the 'gifted': Are boys better at mathematics or do they just think they are?" by Melanie Hargreaves [Assessment in Education, March 2008, Vol. 15 Issue 1, p. 19-38]).

3. Does media violence make children more violent?

This sounded like a topic that would be covered extensively within scholarly journals, so I accessed EBSCOHost's Academic Search Premier and entered the search “media violence" AND children (since these are the major concepts to be found in the question "Does media violence make children more violent?"). This gave me a list of 146 results, including promising entries like "Media violence, physical aggression, and relational aggression in school age children: a short-term longitudinal study" by Douglas A. Gentile (Aggressive Behavior, March/April 2011, Vol. 37 Issue 2, p. 193-206) and "Media Violence: The Effects Are Both Real and Strong" by John P. Murray (American Behavioral Scientist, April 2008, Vol. 51 Issue 8, p. 1212-1230).

Scanning the list of results also produced a number of meaningful subject entries that could provide further assistance in narrowing down the topic ("VIOLENCE in mass media", "CHILDREN & violence", "VIOLENCE in children", "AGGRESSION (Psychology) in children", "MASS media -- Social aspects", "MASS media & children", etc.).

In addition, selecting the option for "Full Text" only narrowed down the search to sources that are immediately available (in case the user does not have the luxury of waiting for articles to be sent via Interlibrary Loan) ... Relevant results through this filter included "The influence of violent media on children and adolescents: a public-health approach" by Kevin D. Browne (Lancet, February 2005, Vol. 365 Issue 9460, p. 702-710) and "The Media-Violence Myth" by Richard Rhodes (Rolling Stone, November 2000, Issue 854, p. 55) whose abstract includes the statement "Clarifies some of the issues raised by two studies that claim a strong connection between early exposure to televised violence and subsequent violent behavior."

4. I need information on the Nazi politcal party of Germany?

"I need information on the Nazi political party of Germany" is a statement which indicates an interest in the Nazi party's past political power within Germany (i.e. WWII-era information rather than anything on Neo-Nazi activity in the present day); it also makes it sound like the user is in need of a number of different resources. Therefore, I visited the HELIN catalog in hopes of compiling a list of items with historical information on the subject.

I entered the word "Nazi" as a subject search, which resulted in 115 items (including "Nazi Party -- See Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei"). Clicking that link, I was brought to a list of 78 subjects; since the user's request seemed to indicate an interest in general information on the political party, I clicked on "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei" (which contained 126 entries) and ignored the various subheadings for the time being.

Selecting "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei" from the catalog brought up several relevant items within URI's collection that would help the user gain a general understanding of the Nazi party during WWII (the first page of results alone has titles like "1933" by Philip Metcalfe [New York: Permanent Press, 1988] and "Charisma and factionalism in the Nazi Party" by Joseph Nyomarkay [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967]). Therefore, this search should be able to provide a satisfactory bibliographical list for the user to accumulate general information on the subject.

5. I need to know who wrote the following :

The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine
Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and eyne,
Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long hoarse cry
Bursts at once from their vital tremendously.

Looking for title/author information for a poem when a user has a few lines available can easily be obtained via a simple Google search, so I entered "tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine" (quotation marks included) and received 180 results.

Several of the results on the first page were from reliable sources, so that I would be comfortable giving the user "Percy Bysshe Shelley" as an answer without questioning its validity ... For example, the second result is a page from the "Keats-Shelley Journal" (http://www.jstor.org/stable/30212741), which reproduces those lines from "A Vision of the Sea" in full. The fourth result is a scan from Volume 3 of "The poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley" via Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=Krw8AAAAYAAJ), again displaying the lines in full.

6. I want to know about exercise as a means of reducing stress.

I decided to check the JSTOR database for information on the subject of reducing stress through exercise, and one of the titles that caught my eye was the "Journal of Health and Social Behavior."

Searching their archives for the keywords "exercise AND stress" produced 158 results, including "Body and Mind: The Effect of Exercise, Overweight, and Physical Health on Psychological Well-Being" by Diane Hayes (Journal of Health and Social Behavior, December 1986, Vol. 27, p. 387-400).

7. I was born Roberta Joan Anderson in Canada on November 7, 1943. Who am I?

Finding a person's real name is another task that can easily be handled by an internet search engine, so I entered "Roberta Joan Anderson" (with quotation marks) into Google and received 559,000 results ... Luckily, the first result was to the Wikipedia entry on Joni Mitchell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Mitchell):

"Joni Mitchell, CC (born Roberta Joan Anderson; November 7, 1943) is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter."

For those uncomfortable with trusting Wikipedia's sources, one could move onto the second page and find an entry in the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan (http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/mitchell_joni_1943-.html) as well as the official Joni Mitchell website (http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=2442) to corroborate the name and birthdate.

8. The lawyer, Updegrove, wrote an article for a Bar Journal in 1997. Can you find the citation?

I used Google to search for the terms "updegrove" and "1997", which led to the website "Andrew Updegrove Lawyer Profile on Martindale.com" (http://www.martindale.com/ Andrew-Updegrove/ 658365-lawyer.htm).

Under his biography, I found the line "'Firms of the Future,' The San Francisco Recorder, June 12, 1996, reprinted in Lawyers Business Journal, Summer, 1997 and Intellectual Property Magazine, October, 1996” (emphasis mine) ... This seemed promising, so I did another Google search for the title "Firms of the Future" and found a reprint of the article (http://www.gesmer.com/publications/article.php?ID=91):

While the topic of the following article varies from our usual subject matter, "Firms of the Future" has been so extensively reprinted that we thought it merited inclusion in the Technology Law Bulletin. Originally written by one of our partners by invitation for the San Francisco Recorder , the legal journal for Silicon Valley, it has also appeared in the October, 1996 issue of Intellectual Property, The Magazine of Law and Policy for High Technology , and in the June 24, 1996 edition of the Washington Legal Times, under the title "Quiet Revolution in Business Law."

The fact that this article has been "extensively reprinted" (including in the Lawyers Business Journal of Summer 1997), I would present this article to the user in the hope that this is the one they were thinking of.

(I should note that I also found the following site via Google - http://66.223.107.171/ attorneys/updegrove.php - and it lists Andrew Updegrove as the author of "Essentials of Creating a Successful Legal Blog" in the Boston Bar Journal ... However, the date of publication is listed as May of 2007, not 1997).

You did not find the article that was wanted as the article you retrieved was not from a Bar Journal. The correct article is: Updegrove, R., Thompson, R. L. (1997). The double-edged sword of child relocations: Successful representation of the parents. Rhode Island Bar Journal, 45(11).

9. Can you find the article that Dick is looking for? He had read the article in the journal (JN) Business Week, but he forgot the title. He knows that he saw it recently. The article was about companies that have oil contracts in Iraq. Provide the latest articles.

I decided to start my search using the WilsonWeb database, by looking for "Business Week" (under "Journal Name") along with the keywords "Iraq AND oil". This resulted in a list of 145 records found, so I narrowed things down by limiting the search to "Feature Article" (under "Document Types"). This gave me a list of 138 records, and (sorting by date) I found "Why Big Oil Is Going Back to Iraq" by Stanley Reed.

The abstract seems to fit Dick's description, since it lists several companies that have (or are planning to have) oil contracts in Iraq:

"Iraq's oil industry is reshaping global energy and threatening the dynamics of OPEC. During the summer, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Eni, and others balked at bidding on rich Iraqi fields because of the tough terms Baghdad was proposing, but they have now returned, having accepted roughly the same deal that was on the table in June. The energy giants are reconsidering Iraq because they fear that this may be their last chance to get big volumes of crude. Moreover, after BP and China National Petroleum Corp. agreed to Iraq's terms following the June auctions, the others realized that they were unlikely to reach a better deal."

However, in the reference interview he mentioned that "he saw it recently", and this article is dated November 16, 2009. Now, "recently" is a bit of a subjective term, but - to me - it would seem to indicate that the article he's thinking of is more recent than a couple of years ago.

With that being the case, I don't have the greatest confidence that this is the exact article that Dick is looking for ... I did try replacing the keyword "oil" with "oil contracts" (to see if that would narrow down the results) and it gave me back one hit: "Big Oil Tiptoes Back into Iraq" by the same author (Stanley Reed).

The record for this article included the subject heading "Petroleum industry/Production sharing contracts/Iraq", which sounded very promising. Therefore, I conducted a new search with "Business Week" under "Journal Name" and "Petroleum industry/Production sharing contracts/Iraq" under "Subject"; this produced a list of three results, including the articles "Red Star Over Iraq" and "Iraq's World Class Oil Ambitions."

The former had more to do with China's involvement specifically with the Iraqi oil trade, but the latter (again written by Stanley Reed) promised a listing of "30 oil firms including Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP" in its abstract ... Unfortunately, this article was also two years old (April 6, 2009), so I'm once again not entirely positive that this is what Dick is looking for.

Therefore, I would bring these two articles back to Dick to see if they rang any bells, but I would be prepared to search further should they not be as current as what he is looking for.

Did you think about switching databases? The articles you retrieved do not fit the bill as a likely resource for Dick’s request.

10. I need a bibliography of the works of Karen Blixen.

I used the HELIN catalog and searched for "Blixen, Karen" under "subject." This led to just two entries in the catalog ("Blixen, Karen, 1885 1962 -- Aesthetics" and "Blixen, Karen, 1885 1962 -- Drama"), but the search also included a "See Also" note for "Dinesen, Isak, 1885-1962."
I clicked the link, which produced a list of 52 entries found, including "Dinesen, Isak, 1885-1962 -- Bibliography" (unfortunately, the book "Karen Blixen : en bibliografi" seems to be written mostly in Danish).

Still, this title should provide a list of Blixen's original works, and checking some of the titles under "Dinesen, Isak, 1885-1962 -- Criticism and Interpretation" should provide further information to satisfy the user's needs ("The aristocratic universe of Karen Blixen" and "Understanding Isak Dinesen" sound like they would be of particular interest on the matter). If nothing else, it provides a call number ("PT8175.B545") where other works on the subject could be located (perhaps via Interlibrary Loan).

Once you have determined that Blixen was an author, did you consider databases that would provide literary reference resources such as Literature Resource Center (Gale)

You did a fair job on the scavenger hunt. More practice will make you more proficient. Notice that picking the right database is an art in itself.