DatabaseAnalysis

Sherry C. Woolam

09SPLS5013-22

Dr. Hilbun

April 26, 2009

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Overview

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• The Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD) was formed in 1999 as a spin off from sister company Children’s Literature, a review service.

• The CLCD Company, LLC maintains the database and provides subscriptions to libraries, schools, colleges and universities, publishers, and vendors.

• The database contains over 1.4 million catalog records of children’s books and media; over 300,000 reviews from 35 sources; award and reading list information; author and illustrator web links; and curriculum tools.

(The CLCD Company)

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• The URL for the CLCD website is http://www.childrenslit.com/

• The database provides for full-text searching of bibliographic records and reviews.

• Publication dates for records included in the database were found from 1600 to 2009. The majority of reviews date from 1993 which is the inception date of sister company, Children’s Literature.

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• CLCD provides resources for anyone who has an interest in children’s literature, but groups that might realize the most benefit include:

Librarians o collection development toolso MARC record downloads

Publishers / Editorso prospective author or market trend researcho product reviews

Teacherso curriculum toolso reading measurement programs (Accelerated

Reader, Lexile, Reading Counts, etc.)

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• Special features include:

Relevancy ranked search results with multiple user select and sort options

Monthly updates Shelf browsing by Library of Congress Classification

Number Multiple field search qualifiers Full-text, natural language searching Reporting options Over 30 review sources MARC, brief, or full record download capability Links to author and illustrator websites Link to Barnes and Noble website to facilitate

purchases

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• Anyone involved in acquisition, research or reference of children-focused media will benefit from the extensive range of consolidated information accessible through the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database.

• The advantage of using CLCD is the comprehensive aspect of the database. Compiling the individual components of one CLCD database record using Google or another Web search engine would be a daunting task.

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Representation

Language

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• CLCD utilizes natural language searching

• In preparation for the spelling and synonym tests, a search was conducted for materials related to children dealing with racial prejudice using the keywords child*, racial, and prejudice that yielded 447 hits.

• A subsequent search deliberately misspelling “racial” as “raical” resulted in over 100,000 hits as the search reverted to “any” search terms found.

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Search results for child* racial prejudice

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Results with “raical” as a search word.

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• In the Synonym Control Test, the word “bigotry” was substituted for “prejudice” and 94 hits were returned, 61 of which were included in the original search.

• The CLCD wordsearch can bemade broader by including word variants generated by a word stemmer and a table of synonyms (CLCD, 2007).

• A search using the keywords child, racial, and prejudice with “word variants” selected returned 900 hits and included terms such as “race”, “racism”, “racist”, “racially”, “prejudices”, “prejudiced”, “children”, and “childhood”.

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SearchFeatures

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• Searches default to all text fields in the database:

Author/Illustrator Title Series Annotation Subject Headings Awards Best Book Lists Reading Lists Reviews Reviewers ISBN

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• CLCD supports several search types such as: Known item for searchers who are

looking for a specific title, possibly a librarian who needs to download a MARC record.

Authors may perform a negative search to determine if anything has been written on a subject.

A subject search may be conducted by anyone with an interest in a particular topic.

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• Search protocols allow for ‘?’ as a wildcard to replace a single letter and ‘*’ for truncation.

• Defaults include searching by both singular and plural word forms; all search words entered; and all text fields

• Searches can be narrowed by limiting searches to the exact words or phrase entered, and by selecting a specific search field such as Title, Author, or Subject Heading.

• Searches can be further narrowed by utilizing the Special Search Qualifiers, Additional Search Qualifiers or Reading Metrics to impose further search limitations.

• Broader searches can be made by selecting ‘word variants’, or ‘any of the words’ options.

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Narrow search

Broaden search

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• Search helps Each of the search or select features are

hyperlinked to Help documentation to clarify use.

The “Consult Help” link on the main page takes the user to a web page that includes a database overview with additional links to search and display procedures; search and display tutorials; and a section of frequently asked questions.

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• Output formats Each record is initially displayed in a brief format that includes

title, publication date, author, illustrator, and classification. o Up to 20 brief records are displayed per page in relevancy

ranked order.

The full display shows the bibliographic record for one item, including publisher name, annotation and subject terms. Reviews are displayed when available, as are awards, prizes, best books and reading lists.o The full display includes hypertext links based on the subject

headings, author names, illustrator names, awards, prizes, reading lists, and reviewer names.

The MARC record can displayed, and the user also has the option to generate custom reports.

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• A Building Block search was conducted on the topic of children coping with the racial prejudice.

 S1 = (child* or youth or adolescent)S2 = (racial prejudice or racism or racial stereotyping)S3 = (cope or manage or respond or react*)S4 = (child* or youth or adolescent) AND (racial prejudice or racism or racial stereotyping) AND (cope or respond or react*) 

• The S4 search returned over 100,000 hits as CLCD treats all words in the search field as keywords and recognizes ‘AND’ as a stop word.

The Boolean AND / OR operators are built into the search screen features as options for ‘word variants’, ‘all words’, ‘any words’, ‘exact phrase’, etc.

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Page 650 of the Building Block search includes hits with 6 occurrences of the word ‘or’.

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• CLCD uses a relevancy-ranking search engine that evaluates relevance:

by the number of occurrences of the search words by the proximity of the words to each other by the significance of the fields where the words are

found, such as search words found in the title are given greater weight than other fields (CLCD, 2007).

• The Building Block search including AND/OR operators is not an effective method for searching this database. Allowing the relevancy-based search engine to search keywords with the database’s built-in narrowing and broadening features produces a more useful selection of hits.

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EvaluationTests

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• The New York Public Library’s 100 Favorite Children’s Books recommended reading list was selected to test for CLCD coverage.

• The books covered categories including Biography and History, Poetry and Song, Stories, Fantasy, Favorite Animal Stories, Humor, Mystery, Science Fiction, Survival/Adventure, and Today’s Kids.(New York Public Library)

• All 100 titles were found which is an indicator of the breadth of titles covered in the database

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• The Kirkus Reviews, Spring and Summer Preview (Kirkus Supplements, 2009) was selected to test the timeliness of the database.

• Of the ten books in the Kids and Young Adult section, only one book with a May publication date was not found in the database.

• The search results included one current month (April) review.

• The mid-month update cycle allows the database to stay current with prior month releases as well as any new materials or reviews published at the beginning of each month.

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• Conclusions about the predictability of the CLCD are based on the relevancy-ranking search engine, as well as database features designed to facilitate user assessment of relevance and pertinence.

As previously noted, the search engine displays brief records by occurrence of keywords/variants and their position in the record.

Brief records also include visual clues that indicate any keywords found in the title, and if reviews and/or curriculum tools are available.

Full records include annotations, subject headings (with hyperlinks), award and reading lists as appropriate for individual titles.

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Keywords or variants found in title

Curriculum tools available

Review included

Partial full display

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• The brief record format combined with the scope of details included in the full display provide users with ample information to predict the relevance and pertinence of search results.

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• The previous search on the topic of children dealing with racial prejudice was also used to test retrievability.

• The keyword search of ‘children racial prejudice’ produced 438 hits. Rearranging the search words to ‘children prejudice racial’ and ‘prejudice racial children’ produced the same results.

• Using truncation ‘child* racial prejudice’ also returned same results.

•  Spelling, however, is an issue for CLCD, as shown on a previous slide, misspelling the word racial as ‘raical’ resulted in over 100,000 hits.

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• Retrieving a known item in CLCD is easily accomplished by specifying as much about the item as is known.

For example, a search by title and author will result in the specific item wanted.

• Citation pearl growing techniques can be used to expand searches by clicking on any of the hyperlinks shown on a full record display. Clicking on a Subject Heading, Award List, or Reviewer link will display similar items.

Clicking on the subject heading Prejudices – Fiction shown on the previous search using the keywords ‘children racial prejudice’ expanded the results from 438 to 826.

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• In evaluating user friendliness, the busy search screen may be confusing for a first-time user, however, the variety of search options can result in a high degree of specificity with minimal experience.

• CLCD suggests new users review the help procedures and tutorials, however, all fields on the search screen are self-explanatory and a successful search can be conducted without browsing the tutorials.

• Result screens are easily navigated even by novice users.

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• The sort, download, browse and custom reporting features enhance the usability of the database.

The MARC record download is a key feature, and the saved text file is easily imported into a library management program such as Follett’s Destiny.

• The inability to restrict results by media type, however, is a negative aspect of the search function.

• Another search negative is remembering to clear all fields prior to starting a new search. With so many search fields it is easy to overlook ones used in a previous search.

From the results screen, the Modify Search button will return to the main screen with search criteria intact.

The New Search button will return to the main search will all search fields cleared.

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Conclusions

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• With over 1.4 million records, the scope of coverage is impressive, monthly updates ensure timeliness, and users benefit from the ease of use, as well as the relevance of search results.

• The combination of bibliographic information, reviews, awards, reading lists, and reading measurement programs makes the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database an invaluable resource for anyone who has an interest in children-focused media.

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References

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Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database. Search/Display Procedures. 2007. http://www.childrenslit.com/use_database/search_procedures.php (accessed April 11, 2009).

The CLCD Company. Who We Are. http://www.childrenslit.com/about/who_we_are.php (accessed April 10, 2009).

Kirkus Reviews. Spring and Summer Preview. Kirkus Supplements 5, no. 1 (January 15, 2009) 11-12. http://www.kirkusreviews.com/kirkusreviews/images/pdf/Spring_Preview.pdf (accessed April 24, 2009).

New York Public Library, 100 Favorite Children’s Books, http://kids.nypl.org/reading/recommended2.cfm?ListID=60, (accessed April 14, 2009).