Competency 6- Browsing Strategy

I chose the WorldCat database for my final searching competency. I decided to try a browsing strategy in this database. My topic remains, “What are the skills and educational requirements for law librarians?” However, this time, I did not try to form any specific search string. I chose only to enter the term law librarian+ (plus sign includes the plural in the term) and chose the descriptors field. I applied limiters of English language and the publication years of 2000-2009. My initial browsing search retrieved 212 results as shown below.



I then clicked on the tab labeled “Serials” to view the five results there. The third result pertaining to legal information management and law librarianship looked interesting.



I continued to browse by clicking on the tab labeled “Books” with 69 results. This list of results immediately showed results that would be of interest to my topic.



The fourth result was highly pertinent to my blog topic and discussed the skills and abilities needed by the modern academic law librarian to fulfill his or her role in a world of changing trends and technologies. It is shown in the screen below and is titled, "The Changing Role of Academic Law Librarianship: Leading Librarians on Teaching Legal Research Skills, Responding to Emerging Technologies, and Adapting to Changing Trends."



I found other pertinent results in browsing through the 69 results. I then decided to try a different browsing technique in this database. On the home page of the database, just below the tabs for Basic Search, Advanced Search, etc., there is a small icon with the word “Subjects.” I clicked on this and then entered “law librarians” in the "Word or Concept" find box. This brought up a hyperlink to the term "Law Librarians." Clicking on this brought me to a list of 711 results as shown below!



I clicked on Books (249 results) and then clicked on the limiters icon. I limited results to the years 2000-2008 and this brought my set of results to 65.

I found the browsing strategy to be quite easy in this database. I was able to scan through the results and identify relevant results. The database itself is fairly user-friendly and I was surprised and pleased by the number of results I obtained. It was easy to apply limiters or search by specific formats in order to narrow down results and not feel overwhelmed by the size of the set retrieved. Overall, I can see occasions for use of the browsing strategy for information retrieval. It is effective when one knows the general subject one wishes to search and browses to see what the database may contain on that subject. It was important that I was able to recognize relevant information and remain engaged with the system to help improve performance as discussed in Chu's (2003) text (p. 92)!

References:

Chu, H. (2003). Information representation and retrieval in the digital age.

Medford, NJ:  Information Today, Inc.