Comp #6 2 of 4 Specific Facet

The database that I used for the specific facet searching was LibLit. From my search terms the facet that I thought would bring me the fewest hits is adults. I tried that term and the database came back with 7,900 hits, none of which had any relevance to my blog on the first page of hits. The second facet I tried was illiteracy. I received 1,218 hits for this facet. As there were several articles on the first page that were relevant. The third facet that I tried was library. 163,429 articles were retrieved when I just searched for library.
Based on these numbers I would go back and use the building block search strategy to narrow down my hits and hopefully retrieve a number of articles and that were both small in number and relevant to my blog.

adults with 7,900
illiteracy with 1,218
library with 163,429

Combining these as (adults) AND (illiteracy) AND (library) I retreived 85 articles and while the first couple were applicable the one that was most suitable and interesting to my topic was:
Sherry, D. Providing Reading Buddies for the Children of Adult Literacy Students: One Way to Provide Onsite Child Care While Also Addressing Intergenerational Illiteracy. Colorado Libraries v. 31 no. 1 (Spring 2004 [i.e. 2005]) p. 40-2.

As the specific facet search includes the building block technique I again found this search easy to narrow down and perhaps find some serendipitous results. I did find it a little frustrating to start off with searching for the broadest term first, but I do realize that it helps to build the search for later.

Comp #6 1 of 4 Building Block

For this search I used the database ERIC. On my first search I used (illiterate or uneducated) AND (adult or grown-up) AND library, I got back 81 hits which I thought was too many to work with. I took out library and (or grown-up) and got 825, way too many hits to wade through and find the information I needed. I then tried to narrow the search and the best search I did was with (illiterate or uneducated) AND people AND library. Here I recieved 21 hits and most of these were relevant to my blog topic.

I find the building block searching the easiest to accomplish. Sometimes it does feel like alot of trial and error, but sometimes that works and I find articles that I might never have found had I not been rebuilding my searching blocks.

Comp #5 Tagging

2008 reading list(1) @(1) America(2) At-Risk(1) bookcrossing release(1) children(1) class(1) culture education(1) education(21) educational issues(1) guest room(1) history(1) homelessness(1) Kozol(1) literacy(14) nf(1) non-fiction(3) Oakland(1) owned(1) Politics(2) poverty(1) public education(2) public schools(1) race(1) reading(1) Reform(1) signed(1) social theory(1) society(1) sociology(5) Technology(1) united states(1) Urban studies(1) wishlist(1)

The website that the above tags can be found at is http://www.librarything.com/work/3513
I chose the book Illiterate America by Johnathan Kozol. The reason I chose this book is becuase it embodies everything that I am writing my blog about. Kozol discusses the impact that illiteracy has on us as a society and how it effects those that are illiterate and even those that aren't.
The tag that I found had the most hits was "education" at 21. This shows that when people using LibraryThing think about illiteracy they view education is one of the most important things to promote helping stop illiteracy . If education can be improved for children and immigrants to the country then rates might fall and illiteracy might become a smaller problem for adults later in life.

RSS Feed Comp #4

For this competency I used Google http://www.google.com/ to find an RSS feed about illiteracy. The feed that I chose to subscribe to was the New York Times feed on illiteracy articles. The website can be found at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/illiteracy/index.html. I chose this site to recieve a feed from as it covers a broad expanse of articles covering my blog topic. It is interesting to see articles that cover all aspects of literacy and the problems that the whole world faces, not just the United States.

Podcast Comp #3

Using YouTube www.youtube.com as my starting point, I found a Podcast that spoke about literacy in America. It was an ABC News broadcast titled "Illiteracy in America", that only ran several minutes, but it was a powerful segment that interviewed several women about the trials and tribulations they had to endure being functionally illiterate. Much of it was focused on medical issues that these women faced, avoiding doctors visits just because they could not fill out the forms. The segment ends with some of the women having learned how to read and then using that to help others that were in the same situation they had just graduated from.

I chose this podcast because it spoke to the librarian in me wanting to reach out and help those that are too scared to reveal their secret of illiteracy. It was also gratifying to find a national broadcast that was advocating literacy instead of ignoring it and treating it as a problem that does not exist.

The podcast can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7nCfRDCcT4 .