Competency #5: Database

Topic: Ways to stimulate young adult interest in reading.

1.Database: ERIC
Search Strategy: Building Block
· Identify components: Stimulate, young adult, reading
· S1=Stimulate, interest, inspire
· S2=young adult , teenage, juvenile
· S3=reading, literacy, phonics
· I enter the Eric Database and enter into each of the three subject fields, respectively:
1. S1: Stimulate or interest or inspire
2. Connector: And
3. S2: Young adult or teenage or adolescents
4. Connector: And
5. S3: Reading or literacy or phonics

My Results:

Hit: What’s Happening in YA Literature? Trends in Books for Adolescents By: Koss, Melanie D.; Teale, William H.. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, v52 n7 p563-572 April 2009. (EJ835922

Hit: It’s All About the Book: Motivating Teens to Read By: Lapp, Diane; Fisher, Douglas. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, v52 n7 p556-561 April 2009. (EJ835916



2. Database: LIBLIT
Search Strategy: Pearl Citation
· I do a basic building block as I did above, but I only use the basic components of the search.
1. S1= Stimulate
2. S2=Young Adult
3. S3=Reading
4. I enter these three terms into three field boxes, respectively.
· I receive 7 hits; one is: Thomas, V., et. al., Get excited about reading: the Anderson team [Stimulating Opportunities for Adolescents to Read (SOAR) Project, Anderson, Indiana, 1991]. Indiana Media Journal v. 17 (Fall 1994) p. 51-4
· I click on the link to this hit.
· Subjects for this hit are: Young adults' reading/Indiana; Young adults' reading/Projects
· I click on and follow Young adults’ reading/Projects
1. I get 226 hits
2. I click on the hit:

Lu Ya-Ling. Engaging Students with Summer Reading: An Assessment of a Collaborative High School Summer Reading Program. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science v. 50 no. 2 (Spring 2009) p. 90-106

3. The subjects I get here are: Young adults' reading/Projects; Young adults' reading/Evaluation
· I decide to follow Young adults’ reading/Evaluation
1. I get 24 hits
2. I click on this hit: Jones, P. The Hip and Well Read: The Reading Interests of Older Teens. In: Serving older teens. Libraries Unlimited, 2004
3. Here are the subjects: Young adults' reading/Evaluation; Public libraries/Collection development
· I choose to follow Public libraries/Collection development.
1. There are 408 hits.
· So, now I have three subjects to use when I do a new search.
1. S1=Young adults’ reading/Projects
2. S2=Young adults’ reading/Evaluation
3. S3=Public libraries/Collection development
4. The connector between each subject is “and”.

My Results:

I yielded 1 hit, but it is very relevant.

Rosenzweig, S. Books that hooked 'em: reluctant readers shine as critics [students at Rhode Island's Woonsocket Middle School recommend books for YALSA's Quick picks 1996]. American Libraries v. 27 (June/July 1996) p. 74-6

(If I need more hits, I would do another pearl citation growth search).


3. Database: JSTOR
Search Strategy: Specific Facet First
· Returning to my topic, I identify the basic components: Stimulate, Young Adults, and Reading
· I enter the word “stimulate” into the data field and click the search button.
· I receive 7,195 hits
· I enter the words “young adult” into the data field and click the search button.
· I receive 183,688 hits.
· I enter the word “reading” into the data field and click the search button.
· I receive 40,139 hits.

My Results:

The facet with the fewest hits is “stimulate”; however, not only do I have too many hits, there are too many irrelevant hits. My options are to go back and do a building block search with the terms, or to do a successive fraction search with the terms.

Hit for “stimulate”: Short-Chain Fatty Acids Stimulate Leptin Production in Adipocytes through the G Protein-Coupled Receptor GPR41
Yumei Xiong, Norimasa Miyamoto, Kenji Shibata, Mark A. Valasek, Toshiyuki Motoike, Rafal M. Kedzierski, Masashi Yanagisawa
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 101, No. 4 (Jan. 27, 2004), pp. 1045-1050


4. Database: PROJECT MUSE
Search Strategy: Successive Fraction
· First, I break the topic into its basic components: stimulate, young adult, reading
· Now, I do a specific facet test to see how many hits each individual component gets on its own.
· I enter the word “stimulate” into the data field.
1. I yield 4,417 hits.
· I enter the words “young adult” into the data field.
1. I run into a complication. When “young adult” is typed into field, PROJECT MUSE translates the search term into: young and adult. This is not what I want, so I must use a synonym: adolescent
2. After I type “adolescent in” I yield 5,124 hits.
· I clear my last search, and enter the word “reading” into the data field.
1. I yield 62,397 hits.
· Now, I identify my facets by the number of hits each received. The facet with the smallest number of hits will be S1, and so on.
1. S1=Stimulate
2. S2=Adolescent
3. S3=Reading
· Now, I begin yet a new search, but this time I enter in my S1 and S2 and S3 in their own respective fields. The connector is “and”.

My Results:

I receive 136 hits.

Hit: Building Literacy Bridges for Adolescents Using Holocaust Literature and Theatre
Wayne Brinda
The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Volume 42, Number 4, Winter 2008, pp. 31-44 (Article)
DOI: 10.1353/jae.0.0022
HTML Version PDF Version (154k) Summary
...that tell a story to stimulate interactive intersections between the...theatre to address adolescent aliteracy remarked: "Books we read now are...our students have with reading by finding strategies that bridge...