Library Resources
Language & Literacy Education 402
Introduction to Library Resources
Language and Literacy Education 402
Dr. Steven Herb September 23, 2003
The following research tips are designed to facilitate your work in the Education & Behavioral Sciences Library, especially with regard to your studies in children's literature. Should you ever need additional guidance, please do not hesitate to ask a librarian for assistance.
Find Children's Literature Reviews, Guides, and Recommendations
Electronic Resources
Full Text Reviews from the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD) [Penn State users only]
Access the CLCD through the E-Resource list or go directly to the website:
The Children's Literature Comprehensive Database offers information about children's books, videos, and audio books ranging from baby board books to novels and nonfiction for young adults. Of the more than 500,000 MARC format records; about 50,000 include full textbook reviews from well-respected sources such as KIRKUS Reviews, Science Books & Films, and Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA). A green dot in the results list denotes a full textbook review. The powerful search engine allows searching by standards such as title, author, subject, but also allows searching by genres such as historical fiction, poetry, folklore, and picturebooks
http://www.lias.psu.edu/dball.html#CHILDLITIND
Full Text Reviews from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe [Penn State users only]
This database is particularly useful for finding reviews of titles and authors. To access full text book reviews from some of the nation's larger newspapers, select the News category from the main screen and then select Arts & Sports because it contains Reviews as well as entertainment & sports news. Select book, movie, music, & play reviews from the source pull down menu. Date ranges for the search can be adjusted, as the search requires.
http://www.lias.psu.edu/dball.html#LEXIS
Review Citations from Library Literature
Another good database for tracking down citations of book reviews is Library Literature, found on the E-Resource list. Go to Library Literature and search using the keyword command for book review and your topic, e.g., book review and bats or book review and folktales. Once you find the citations you need, go back to the CAT to find out if Penn State owns the Journal in question.
Print Resources
The Horn Book Guide to Children's and Young Adult Books
Two issues cover each year for the last twelve years (1989-2001). The Horn Book Guide evaluates all hard cover children's books published in the United States, and in addition to a 60 to 75-word review, gives each book a numerical rating from 1 (outstanding) and to 6 (poor). Reading reviews, rather than relying on numbers, is always wise. The Horn Book Guide is an excellent source for finding reviews of books in hand, as long as they are published between 1989 and today. It is an even better resource for finding recommended books by particular subjects, and then searching the CAT to see if Penn State owns the recommended titles. The Education and Behavioral Sciences Library holds a paper copy behind the desk (1989-1994) and in the "About Children's Literature" section of our stacks at the end of the juvenile fiction books (1989 to present). The Education and Behavioral Sciences Library also has a CD version of The Horn Book Guide on a specially marked computer workstation on the 5th floor of Paterno. It covers the years 1990 through 1998.
Z1037.A1H67 Periodicals Educ & Behav Sci Lib 5th Floor Paterno
Children's Book Review Index
The Children's Book Review Index is especially useful for its coverage of 1965 through 1997. Find the author of books written during those periods, find the title of the book you are seeking within the author's section, and see a list of places that the book was reviewed. Go to the appropriate journal or newspaper to find the review. Many of the cited periodicals will be in Pattee, if not owned in the Education and Behavioral Sciences Library on the 5th floor of Paterno. The abbreviation list of review journal and newspaper titles is located in the front of every volume.
Z1037.A1C475 Reference Educ & Behav Sci Lib 5th Floor Paterno
Children's Literature Review
When an author or illustrator has published several books, this is a particularly useful and thorough resource. Find the author or title in the cumulative index in the latest volume and go to the citation in a previous volume for biographical and bibliographical information, including full text children's book reviews.
PN1009.A1C5139 Reference Educ & Behav Sci Lib 5th Floor Paterno
Using Journals to Find Children's Book Reviews
Among the many journals that review children's books, three of the Education and Behavioral Sciences Library's holdings stand out.
The Horn Book Magazine
Contains reviews from its first issue in 1924 through today. Known as a "positive review" journal, typically the selection of a book for review is considered an achievement since only about 350 books are reviewed annually among the six bi-monthly issues.
Z1037.A1A15 Periodicals Educ & Behav Sci Lib 5th Floor Paterno
A cumulative index to the magazine, the Horn Book Index covers 1924 through 1989, the year the Horn Book Guide began.
Z1037.A1A15 suppl.Periodicals Educ & Behav Sci Lib 5th Floor Paterno
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Published since 1947, Penn State has holdings beginning with Volume 11 in 1957. Published 11 times per year, the Bulletin publishes about 750 children's book reviews per year.
Z1037.A1C5 Periodicals Educ & Behav Sci Lib 5th Floor Paterno
School Library Journal
Published 12 times per year and contains about 2500 reviews annually, nearly half of the children's books published in the United States each year. Reviews of media and software are two additional types of materials evaluated. University Park has SLJ from 1994 to the most recent issue.
Z1037.A1S38 Periodicals Educ & Behav Sci Lib 5th Floor Paterno
Finding Books
The CAT is Penn State's online catalog of books and journals available in the University Libraries system. For a basic introduction, see A Quick Guide to the Cat
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/instruction/CAT_guide.htm This guide will tell you not only how to search for books and journals on The CAT, but also how you may request library materials that are not housed here on the University Park campus.
- For a sample search, try typing Harry Potter as TOPIC + SUBJECT to get
- Books in the Harry Potter series
- Videotapes of the Harry Potter movies
- Books about the Harry Potter series
- Biographies of the author, J. K. Rowlin
Then experiment with limiting your search by material type (books, juvenile books, instructional material, video material), library location, date, etc. and see how those modifications alter your results. Also notice how your results change when you do a KEYWORD search on Harry Potter. In addition, submit an AUTHOR search in any of the following formats:
- Rowling
- Rowling, J. K.
- Rowling, J K
- J. K. Rowling
To see how illustrators are treated as authors in The CAT, do an AUTHOR search on Maurice Sendak, best known for his beloved book, Where the Wild Things Are. Once again, limit your search according to material type, date, or library location, and notice how your search results are affected.
- Note that a KEYWORD search on wild things, limited to "Instructional material" under Material type, retrieves an activity book and a literature unit.
- Remove the "Instructional material" limit and expand your KEYWORD search to wild things kit to find a copy of the book accompanied by puppets of Max (the story's protagonist) and a Wild Thing.
Remember to use The Cat's truncation symbol ($) whenever you wish to search efficiently on several words derived from the same root. For example:
TOPIC + SUBJECT = bear$ retrieves items whose title and/or subject(s) includes not only bear, but also bears, bearing, beard, beards, etc.
The PSU Libraries uses the Library of Congress classification for books, journals, and videos. For a complete guide to the classification scheme by subject, go to: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/lcco.html In addition, the EBSL uses in-house classification systems for its collections of picture books, instructional and multimedia materials, and kits. Here are some sample call numbers and locations:
NC975 .M37 1988 JUVENILEBK Paterno - 5th Floor Education Juvenile &
A Caldecott celebration: six artists and their paths Young Adult Non-fiction
to the Caldecott medal (Salmon shelf card)
Picture Books F363vel 2002 JUVENILEBK Paterno - 5th Floor Education Picture Books
The Velveteen Rabbit (Fluorescent pink shelf card)
Fiction R6885harypo 2003 JUVENILEBK Paterno - 5th Floor Education Juvenile &
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Young Adult Fiction
(White shelf card)
PZ7 .S47Wh 1988b MULTIMEDIA 5th floor Paterno Multimedia
Where the Wild Things Are book plus two puppets (Green shelf card)
QB501 .O97 2001 MULTIMEDIA 5th floor Paterno KITS
Our Amazing Solar System: planetary science kit (White shelf card)
PS3503 .I235V4538 INSTR-MATL Paterno - 5th Floor Instructional Material
A guide for using The Velveteen Rabbit in the classroom (Blue shelf card)
Always be sure to note from The CAT the location of the item(s) in which you're interested. The subject area(s) of your research will determine where the resources that you'll use are housed. At the service desks you may request a "stack guide" that tells you where call numbers may be found in the Pattee/Paterno Libraries. Click here http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tour/elevation.html to see a map of the Pattee/Paterno complex. Still more libraries for different subject areas are scattered across campus. Stop by any service desk to consult a map or to get directions to various libraries here at University Park.
Finding Journal Articles
There are several approaches that you can take to locating journal articles:
- Using The CAT, browse the titles of Penn State's periodicals devoted to children's literature. Search TOPIC + SUBJECT with the phrase child$ literature, limiting the "Material type" to Periodicals.
- From the Libraries' homepage, go to the E-Resource List http://www.lias.psu.edu/alall.html . There you may choose from over 200 databases or online indexes, ranging from very general to highly specialized, in a wide variety of disciplines. Many of these offer full text. If a database provides only citations and abstracts, then you may search by the journal title in The CAT or the Full Text Electronic Journals database listed with the E-Resources. See also How to Find an Article: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/instruction/how_tofind/article.htm
- On the Libraries' homepage, go to Articles and More ; then follow the link to Find Articles by Subject http://www.lias.psu.edu/gensubjlist.html
- If you wish to browse an online journal, go to E-Journals at Penn State
- ProQuest Direct is an excellent database for locating newpaper, magazine, and journal articles on an extremely broad range of topics. Access Proquest through the E-Resource List. Consult the "Browse Topics" and "Search Tips" sections under Tools for guidance with constructing searches. While some entries provide only citation and abstract, many others are full text, including graphics (see full-page icon); some are in PDF and may be read with Adobe Acrobat (see full-page icon with camera overlay).
For a sample search on Proquest Direct, try the following:
- Select BASIC SEARCH; if you are just searching for several terms simultaneously, ADVANCED SEARCH is better.
- For a sample search on Proquest Direct, try the following:
- Select BASIC SEARCH; if you are just searching for several terms simultaneously, ADVANCED SEARCH is better.
- Using ADVANCED SEARCH, enter "Harry Potter" (include the quotation marks to search the words as a phrase) on one line AND Rowling in the next. You must combine the terms using AND for the search to work properly.
- Explore the pull-down options for DATABASE and DATE RANGE, but leave them set on MULTIPLES DATABASES and ALL DATES to retrieve the largest number of articles; in this case, over 1,900.
- Try limiting the results to SCHOLARLY JOURNALS, INCLUDING PEER-REVIEWED to weed out popular journal and newspaper articles. (NOTE:
- Peer-reviewed" means that an article has been screened by a panel of highly knowledgeable people in that particular subject area prior to publication. It's a quality control measure that allows you, as reader, to trust the accuracy of the author's data and conclusions.) This will reduce your results to 70.
- Remove the SCHOLARLY JOURNALS limitation and instead limit by FULL TEXT ARTICLES ONLY, which will yield over 1,800 articles.
- Always hit SEARCH to generate your results.
- If you retrieve either more or fewer articles than what you need, then consider reconstructing your searching by adding one or more additional search terms or modifying how you combine terms. Try using the ADVANCED SEARCH mode, where there are boxes between the lines for your search terms. Use the pull-down menu to explore how you can either broaden or limit your search by combining your terms with such options as AND, OR, AND NOT, etc.
- Notice that several of the articles are available online in full text-some even with graphics!-and still others can be viewed as page images, just as though you were holding the original printed page in hand. (This is useful if you need to quote something from your article and need to cite an exact page in your bibliographic notes.) Click on whichever text format you prefer to read the article online, email it to yourself, or print out a hard copy.
- Other entries have no icons indicating full text. For those, you will need to write down ALL of the bibliographic information for your article: the article title, the name(s) of the author(s), the journal title (in boldface type; this is the most important information!), and the date, volume, and pagination of the article. THEN…
- Return to The CAT and do a title search on the journal title, NOT the title of the article or the author. If PSU owns that journal, then you can get its call number and location from The CAT and read the article offline. You may also search for the article among the various E-journals at Penn State http://apps.libraries.psu.edu/fasttrack/search.cfm.
Other Databases of Interest
Several other databases available on the E-Resources List are pertinent to your work in children's literature and should be consulted for articles. Explore these databases using the sample search strategies provided for each title:
- Contemporary Authors
- Contemporary Literary Criticism
- Dictionary of Literary Biography
-
All three of these databases are offered by Gale Literary Databases and may be searched simultaneously. You may search by author, title, genre, and/or a variety of other fields. Their articles are complimentary but not identical; explore all three databases for best results.
-
-
Education Abstracts Full Text
-
Try searching Child* literature. Record the information provided in the SOURCE (SO) field; then look up the journal title in The CAT.
-
-
Education Databases (including ERIC); ERIC Databases
-
Select Ask ERIC, then Topics A-Z. Click on C to find a link to Childrens (sic) Literature and scroll down to read about various websites related to this subject.
-
Also try a Simple Search on Harry Potter. This will generate a list of documents whose "call number" begins with ED (acronym for ERIC Document). For complete bibliographic information plus an abstract of the item, click on the number; then check The CAT for availability at Penn State. ERIC documents dating from before 1993 are available on microfiche in the News & Microforms Library on the ground floor of West Pattee, adjacent to MacKinnon's Café.
-
The full text of ERIC documents dating from 1993 to the present may be accessed online. Record the full ERIC document number (ED_____) for each item in which you're interested. Then search each number separately in the ERIC Document Retrieval Service (EDRS) database, part of the ERIC Databases available on the E-Resources List.
-
-
Literature Online
-
You may search this database by author, title, and other fields.
-
An author search on J K Rowling allows you to explore three information fields: "Author Record," "Biography," and "Works About."
-
-
MLA Bibliography
-
This is one of the primary databases in the field of literature. Try searching J K Rowling with "Terms Anywhere" to generate a remarkable variety of articles commenting upon the famous Harry Potter series. As with the Education Abstracts database, record the information in the SOURCE (SO) field, then search for the item in The CAT.
-
-
New York Times Historical (1851-1999)
-
This database is part of Proquest Direct. Using it will allow you to narrow your search significantly, compared to doing a basic search on Proquest. See the Proquest search instructions provided above
-
-
Psychology Databases
-
While this option is not likely to generate a large quantity of articles related to children's literature, it is still worth checking. Follow the instructions provided above for the Education Abstracts and MLA Bibliography databases.
-
-
WorldCAT (search here for books and articles not owned by Penn State)
Common Search Tips For Using Electronic Databases
Some basic principles underlie most search strategies using electronic databases. If you would like some guidance on how to construct your search, click here http://www.libraries.psu.edu/ebsl/humphreyfellowship.html#SEARCH This site offers tips on defining vocabulary, combining terms, truncating words, and limiting search results. Keep in mind that search terms vary from one database to another.
Where to Find Other Library Materials
- Videos, DVDs, and sound recordings are housed in the Music & Media Center on the second floor of West Pattee. Since those stacks are closed to the public, you will need to page the item(s) you want by giving the CAT call number(s) to the attendant on duty.
- Videos and DVDs housed in Media Technology & Support Services must be requested from that unit; the turnaround time is typically two business days.
- Government documents may be found in the Social Sciences Library on the second floor of Paterno Library. International, U. S., and RAND documents are all filed according to different classification systems. Ask a reference librarian at the service desk for assistance with finding your item(s).
- Microforms and newspapers are primarily housed in their own library in the basement of West Pattee, adjacent to MacKinnon's Café. The Social Sciences Library has many microforms of government documents in its collection as well. Both sites provide equipment with which you may read and print out copies of information on microforms.
Contact Information
Please do not hesitate to talk to a librarian at any service desk whenever you have a question. Someone will always be glad either to help you right there or to refer you to the best library for your needs. For questions specifically related to this class, contact your instructor:
Dr. Steven Herb
Education & Behavioral Sciences Library
501 Paterno Library
814-863-2141 office/814-865-2842 reference desk
slh18@psu.edu
Prepared by Steven Herb and Ann Marie Rigler
September 2003