During class on Friday, I found a book in the reference stacks, and for this blog, I found a book in the book stacks. The book that I found on Friday is called Water, Ice, and Stone by Bill Green and the one that I found for this blog is called Combined Heat, Ice, and Water balances at selected glacier basins by Lash Unesco. Since my cluster topic for the most part is focusing on water and ice, I think that these books are relevant to my topic.
I tried using different searches to find these books, and I tried to incorporate broad words to find my books, as the database could give me multiple choices in a variety of forms. For the book that I found in the book stacks, I searched 'ice to water,' and found a few answers. The title of this book seemed to fit the best, so that is the one that I chose. For the book that I checked out during class last week, I searched 'ice molecules' and 'water and ice' so that's how I found that book. When I did this search, I only got a few results, but to my luck I found a book that was related to my cluster topic and one that was available.
I ran across some problems such as the fact that the database gives a wide range of answers, and that only certain searches yielded quality answers, so that's why most of my searches were related and shared common search terms. Also, I had trouble finding my book in the library. I looked for the book by using its call number, and made sure that it was "on the shelf" but I started downstairs when my book was upstairs. Once I realized that I wasn't even on the right floor, I of course felt like a true freshman, but I tried to hide the slight embarrassment and find the book. I ventured upstairs to the second floor and found it there. So now that I know how to find a book by its call number, I should have no problem finding this next book...hopefully.
I learned that I needed to be more specific than just one word searches if I wanted quality books that were relevant to my search. You can get hundreds of results if you search 'ice,' but how many of those will be sufficient to your cluster topic. I also learned to scan all of my results You may get 2-3 pages of results, but if you give up after looking at just the first two titles, you may miss a good book. I also learned that you can find a book besides just searching the title. If you know the author, or just simply looking for the works of a specific man or woman, you can search the library catalog that way. You can also search a book by is call number. This will help kids like myself who don't understand at first if a book is in the reference stacks or somewhere else. You can find a books general location if you know its call number as the two levels of our library are sorted by call number.
Call number for Combined Heat... GB651 .T4 no.5
Call number for Water, Ice, and Stone GB 1798 .V53 G74
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I think part of your challenge with these searches is in your terms. If you enter "ice to water," that string of characters must appear somewhere in the record. If you enter "ice" AND "water" you will get any record that includes both those words. It's usually not a good idea to use prepositions and other "small" words in your searches as they limit your results in ways that may not be helpful.
The other point is that if you were to enter "ice and water" in your search box, the "and" would not work as a boolean operator. It would look for a character string of "ice and water." If you enter "ice" in one line, use AND as a boolean operator, and enter "water" in the next line, your search results will include anything that has both words in it somewhere.
Perhaps that will help.
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