Deborah Harnke LI 837 Information Lesson July 15, 2012

Tips for Simple Searching within the Bureau of Land Managements Digital Library
In October of 2011 the Bureau of Land Management Library began their digitization effort to scan their historical documents. Digitizing their collection meant preserving the collection online. This will make the materials available to BLM employees and to the public through the Internet. BLM materials were selected and sent off to Internet Archive (IA) to be digitized. Besides being housed at IA, their electronic digital collection can also be found on a content management system. This site, as well as the digitization effort, is a work in progress. Materials continue to be sent off to be digitized and are constantly being uploaded. In the future as new materials are created and identified to be digitized they will be, but the end of 2012 will complete the bulk of the digitization project. Many of the BLMs employees do not even know that the digitization effort exists at this point in time. Unfortunately most employees dont even know that a library is available to them either. Once items have been digitized and uploaded along with the creation of our new website, there will be a large roll out where we will attempt to grab the attention of BLM. We anticipate that once this occurs our usage will drastically increase. Preemptive instruction, such as this, will help the meager staff of three cope with the increase in usage and demands on their time. This site has also not been made known to anyone at this point. As mentioned above it is still currently being worked on. Also, unfortunately many of BLMs employees do not even know that the library is a resource available to them. This set of instruction has been created with BLM employees in mind, since they will be the ones primarily using this resource. It is a basic introduction to the simple searching that is made available. While designing the following instructions I considered the ADDIE design model. I analyzed the needs and characteristics of the employees within the Bureau. The following design incorporated a strategy that addresses those needs and characteristics. You will see below the instruction that has been developed. At this point in time once the digital library site is available for users Implementation will be complete. There will then be a need to evaluate the effectiveness of the product, which survey questions below have been provided. This cyclic process will help develop the best set of instruction for the users.

Tips for Simple Searching within the Bureau of Land Managements Digital Library
BLMs digital library can be found here: http://cdm15879.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search The following instruction will give introductory directions on how to search BLMs digital collection. Instruction on simple searching, beginning a new search, and tips on refining your search will be provided as well as examples.

Using the Simple Search The simple search box (at the top of the website) searches for items across all fields in all collections, for all terms; this can be done in any order. For example, if you search for "sage grouse," the search engine searches for items containing "sage" and "grouse." Simple searching searches for those terms in titles, collections, and the text within the document. The simple search supports the use of a wildcard operator that allows you to search for approximate terms. Using an asterisk (*) at the end of a search term expands a search to include all forms of a root word. For example, fish* will find results with the words "fish," "fishery," "fisheries, fishing, etcetera.

New Search After using the simple search, you can start a new simple search by typing the search term and selecting new search from the drop down bar, just right of the search box, choose new search instead of within results. Selecting Home at the top of the website will also clear the results and allow a new search to begin. Refining Your Search After using the simple search, you can make your initial results more specific by searching within results from the simple search box or by choosing from the keywords listed in the Narrow your search by: on the left side of the site. You also can add or remove collections from the search. For example simple search fossil*, and within those results narrow your search by subject, possible options include California Desert, paleobotany, and cultural property. If you have narrowed your search too far, move back by removing the keywords used in your search path. Do this by click the X right of each search term displayed at the top of your results.

For additional searching tips or for assistance with advance searching please contact the BLM library at 303-236-6650 or at blm_library@blm.gov.

Evaluation: To evaluate the effectiveness of this instruction I would like to have a short survey with the following questions available for users to participate in: o Did the instructions help you improve your simple searching skills in BLMs digital library? o Do you have more confidence in finding BLMs library materials online? o What could have been done differently to help you learn this material easier? o Was there anything missing in the instructions that you would have liked to see presented? Please contact me or any other librarian at the BLM for any other questions concerns, or clarification. You can receive assistance from the library at 303-236-6650 or blm_library@blm.gov. Or you can contact Deborah Harnke directly at 303-236-6648 or dharnke@blm.gov, I appreciate your comments and questions!

Reflection: When I first began I thought I would add advanced searching to the instruction. But I also wanted to limit the length of the instruction, two pages it seems to be more manageable and not as intimidating. I found it very difficult to not overload the directions. I backed off of the advanced searching and focused on more simple searches and how to narrow those searches down. Since the digital collection will be only be roughly 5000 documents and because the primary user will probably not need to do advanced searching it didnt seem useful to the user. If I were to do this assignment again I would consider also doing the advanced searching as a separate instruction, just in case individuals found it informative. Throughout the instruction I bolded what I wanted the participant to select on the website. I have always appreciated the clarity of those written instructions since often I will skim the actual instruction and search for those bolded terms. I also like to have examples within the instruction, finding them useful. That way if I ever get lost I can follow their example and see if it works. Written instructions were more difficult than I had thought. I had to be succinct in the way instruction was communicated to the user. I tried to get a lot of information across to the user in a brief manner with appropriate examples to those who would be searching the digital collection.