Competency 6, Search 3: Successive Fraction Strategy with Eric/First Search

I decided to repeat my last search using a different search strategy and engine to find any additional or better results. I chose successive fraction strategy because I do not expect to find too many articles on this somewhat narrow topic.

Naïve Question: I would like to implement virtual reference services for my school library. What do I need to know and consider?

Facets	Virtual	Reference services	School library
My initial terms	online, digital		media center
Thesaurus terms	online systems	reference services	school libraries

I was surprised that I could not find any usable subject headings under virtual or digital. There were several for online, but I decided that online systems closest described the virtual reference system.

Search Terms:	Records Retrieved:
Online systems	6, 814
Reference services	2,952
School libraries	5,790

SS1: online systems AND school libraries (all subject phrase search) Results: 118

Notes: Since I am using the successive fraction strategy, I chose the two subject headings that retrieved the most records and searched them together. Already, this narrowed the results drastically, and I am seeing some very useful documents. The following article reveals the students' perspectives on using an online reference service as well as the librarian's view and gives insight on how to use these perspectives to best create a system to serve the patron's needs.

Farmer, S. (2003, Sept.-Oct.). Electronic reference service: a teen's eye view. Knowledge Quest, 32(1), p. 32-33.

SS2: online systems AND school libraries AND reference services (all subject phrase search) Results: 21

Notes: In order to narrow the results further, I added the last search term to the search. This did the trick as my results were whittled down to only 21 documents pertaining to my search. I do not even need to add limiters! The following article emphasizes the need for virtual reference services in schools and outlines the systems of three school libraries.

Brewer, S. (2003). Virtual reference services. Northwest Education, 9(1), p. 7-35.

Reflection: Even though I had never used this strategy before, I found it to be the easiest and quickest search method I have used yet. The most time was spent in searching the thesaurus for the facets and determining which search terms to use.