Search

This manual is the textbook for a two-unit course for upper division students at a middle-sized university academic research library, the University of California Santa Barbara Library. The book introduces search strategy for finding information for a term paper. After discussing factual information about library collections, classification, card catalogs, and filing, the book presents search strategy to the students, including use of encyclopedias and dictionaries, finding book materials, finding current materials by identifying indexes and abstracts and learning their use, finding and using bibliographies, and evaluating materials located. The accompanying assignments require students to go through this search strategy step by step. In this way, they experience various techniques upon which to base decisions for searching for information in the future. The course is designed to develop the students' critical thinking and problem-solving skills in finding their way through the complexities of the contemporary academic research library or any library they might use in the future. (Author/JD)

Many writers have suggested that comprehension occurs at several levels (e.g., literal, inference, and conclusion). However, many teachers spend as much as two-thirds of their time on lower-level skills such as phonics and literal-level comprehension skills. Some authors have suggested ways of assisting readers in achieving comprehension at more than one level by such techniques as surveying and paragraph analysis. Several prominent educators have devised models of learning and thought, which have been translated into usable taxonomies for developing comprehension skills. (A chart is included that presents six of these models along with examples of how each is employed.) (TJ)