EDUTL 3160 Library Guide: Home

To find books, you are going to use the library's catalog, below. On the previous page, I posted some helpful ideas to construct an effective search term. You can get a little bit more advice here, or just dive right into searching our catalog at the bottom of the page.

One thing to keep in mind is the difference between 'keyword', 'subject', and 'author/title' searching.

The catalog defaults to a keyword search, which tries to find your search terms in the title, author, publisher, table of contents - basically, in all the digitally available information it has, but not the full text of the books themselves. Keyword searches are broad, typically a great place to get started.

A subject search looks for your search terms in a single field: the subject headings. This is the official terminology that will be shared between many books, making it easier to group them all together. A keyword search for 'World War II' will not bring up books that use 'World War 2' instead, and vice versa; a subject search for 'World War, 1939-1945' will cover both. Always check a good book or article for its subjects to get a good idea for your next search.

A title or author search looks for that one piece of information. If you have an exact title or an exact author, use it! This can be really helpful if you find the citation for a book or article that looks helpful in a source you already have. One important thing to remember, though: An author search using Piaget, Jean finds books or articles written by Jean Piaget; a subject search using Piaget, Jean primarily finds articles about Jean Piaget. Author finds by, subject finds about.

The Lima Campus Library (and a great many academic libraries) is organized by a system known as Library of Congress. That means that books are grouped together by subject rather than author, letting you know where you can go to browse and potentially find some interesting books on the topic. Many books for this class will be near the call numbers BF720 and LB1100, though there are more beyond. Bring those call numbers to the front desk of the library and they can show you to your section.

Many times, resources are specialized to focus on one particular type of information. This is particularly true of databases. Often, to get the best possible information, you will find yourself searching more than one database, and it helps to choose ones that focus on your area of study. For a complete listing of all Education databases OSU subscribes to, please click here; for a complete listing of all Psychology databases, click here.

Sometimes, it can be challenging to know which databases are best for your subject.  Below, I link directly to a handful of databases you may find particularly useful, but these are by no means the only resources you can use.

In addition to books and academic journal articles, you'll also be able to use e-books and websites. The same basic ideas apply: Create your search term, plug it into the appropriate engine, and evaluate the resources that come back to see what looks reliable. Below, I've included links to a small handful of e-books and websites that can help get you started, but there's a lot more out there! You can find our e-books in the Library Catalog - after you type in your search terms, just switch from 'search full catalog' or 'Lima catalog' in the top right corner to 'E-books'.

• Introducing Piaget: A Guide for Practitioners and Students in Early Years Education
• http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/detail.action?docID=10749421

Jean Piaget was one of the most significant contributors to our current understanding of how children think and learn, from birth through to adolescence. In this comprehensive and accessible new book, Ann Marie Halpenny and Jan Pettersen capture the key concepts and principles of Piaget’s fascinating work on children’s thinking, and explore how thinking evolves and develops from infancy through the early years and beyond.
from the book's description on Taylor & Francis

• Vygotsky: Philosophy and Education
• http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781118368732;jsessionid=D588D6B5453EDF8982EE6FB304C861EB.f04t02

Vygotsky Philosophy and Education reassesses the works of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky work by arguing that his central ideas about the nature of rationality and knowledge were informed by the philosophic tradition of Spinoza and Hegel.
from the book's description on Wiley Online Library

• The Learning Brain: Memory and Brain Development in Children
• http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/detail.action?docID=10767037

The key to improving education lies in understanding how the brain works: that is where learning takes place, after all. The book focuses in particular on "working memory"--our ability to concentrate and to keep relevant information in our head while ignoring distractions (a topic the author covered in The Overflowing Brain). Research shows enormous variation in working memory among children, with some ten-year-olds performing at the level of a fourteen-year old, others at that of a six-year old. More important, children with high working memory have better math and reading skills, while children with poor working memory consistently underperform. Interestingly, teachers tend to perceive children with poor working memory as dreamy or unfocused, not recognizing that these children have a memory problem. But what can we do for these children? For one, we can train working memory. The Learning Brain provides a variety of different techniques and scientific insights that may just teach us how to improve our children's working memory. Klingberg also discusses how stress can impair working memory (skydivers tested just before a jump showed a 30% drop in working memory) and how aerobic exercise can actually modify the brain's nerve cells and improve classroom performance.
from the book's Oxford University Press description

The OSU Subject Librarians List
The National Association for the Education of Young Children
The National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators