Whenever I start mucking about in the catalog, I realize I have to be just
about unaccessable to the kids (and teachers), one of those left brain/right
brain things. So you might find yourself being a lot more librarian and a
lot less teacher as you start to modify all the records involved. Plus
whatever learning curve in cataloging is involved. This is assuming that the
catalog records are good ones to begin with.
I wonder if developing some flyers, posters, resource guides, or pathfinders
wouldn't be more efficient. Especially if passed out during a class overview
before a project starts.
Not to mention that the students will discover that the public library
doesn't 'google' their catalog.
Robert Eiffert, Librarian
Pacific Middle School
Evergreen SD 114 Vancouver WA
beiffert@egreen.wednet.edu
pac.egreen.wednet.edu/library
robert@crypticmachinery.net
> As I watch students (I'm in a high school of 500, grades 8 to
> 12) search my catalogue I see that their expectations have
> been established by Google: when they do a keyword search for
> 'marijuana' they expect to find every book with information
> about marijuana; of course, that is not what happens; they
> find only the books with the word 'marijuana' entered
> somewhere in the record. I then tell them they need to
> broaden their search -- "try 'drugs' or 'drug abuse'" -- and
> many more hits appear.
>
> There is no chance I am going to effectively teach even a
> small minority of our students how to 'broaden the search'
> (my half-time librarian status is just one reason), so I'm
> thinking that my catalogue has to be more Google-like. To
> that end I am considering adding many more keywords to the
> book records. My first thought is to select keywords from the
> table of contents of a book and list them in the 'note' field
> of the book record.
>
> I would appreciate your opinions about all this, and I would
> especially like to hear from anyone who is already doing this.
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