Children's Literature and Librarianship: Finding Scholarly Articles

Developing Search Terms 

The first step in picking a topic is to brainstorm by asking yourself a few questions.  What do you already know about this topic from your course readings?  Are there similar ideas that you might want to explore?  What are the key concepts that you're interested in pursuing? Once you've spent a bit of time answering these questions, you can take the concepts you've identified and use the keywords and phrases to start searching for information.

Recommended Databases

Below is a selection of online resources that include a vast number of articles on topics in Library & Information Science.

Database Search Strategies

Databases respond best to keyword searching.  To search efficiently, turn your research question into a keyword search:

Research Question:  How do children's librarians choose appropriate titles for public library collections?

Search One: (Search with keywords connected by “and”):
children and public and library and collection

Search Two: (Truncate some of the keywords using *):
child* and public and librar* and collect*

Search Three: (Add alternate words into the search with “(or)”):
public and librar* and (collect* or acqui*) and (child* or young adult or teen* or adolescen*)

Truncate keywords where applicable.  Truncation uses the asterisk (*) to end a word at its core, allowing you to retrieve many more documents containing variations of the search term.  Truncation can also be used to find the singular and plural forms of a term.  Example: educat* will find educate, educates, education, educators, educating and more.

Link Google Scholar to Simmons Library

Google works with libraries to determine which journals and papers they've subscribed to electronically.  Once you configure the Library Links settings in Google Scholar, links to full-text articles will display in Google Scholar when they're available through Simmons Library.

• Use Google Scholar From On-Campus

  • To make these links appear, just access Google Scholar from any Simmons computer and the links will automatically be included.

• Google Scholar From Off-Campus
  • Click on Settings link in the upper right corner of Google Scholar.
  • Choose "Library Links" on the left, type Simmons University and click the "Search" button.
  • If prompted, check "Simmons University - Check Simmons Full Text"  from the list of results.
  • Click the blue "Save" button.
  • Start searching Google Scholar with links to your library's resources (you may need to authenticate yourself to access these resources).

Finding an Article with Its Citation

Search Children's Literature Journals

Citation Searches

You can use an article for more than just content.  Check to see:

• If there are words/phrases in the subject terms or abstract that you can use as search keywords.
• If there are instruments, tests or measures you want to use in your own research.
• What else the author has written.
• If the references (cited works) are useful for your own argument or literature review.
• What other articles have cited this article since it was published and if they also may be useful sources.

Citation searches are a great way to find the folks writing articles in direct conversation about a topic, text, or theoretical lens. Citation searching means looking at a publication's reference list (folks they cited before publishing) and "cited by" list (folks who cited them after they published).

The reference list will be at the end of the article, chapter, or book, and you can pick which sources you want to track down. The Cited By list is different but just as easy to find with tools like Google Scholar. Simply search for the article/publication in Google Scholar, then click the Cited By link below the title in the search results. This will bring up a list of all the publications Google Scholar can find that cited the original article. You can do this type of search with any publication you find until you have what you need.