Early Childhood Education

Developing a search query can be a challenge. Here are some tips to help.

• Check out a database's Thesaurus to find appropriate keywords for the item for which you are looking. 

• A longer search query helps databases retrieve more specific resources

• Using "OR" between terms will retrieve more results

• Using "AND" between terms will retrieve less results
   
• Use a * (star) truncation symbol, which acts as a wildcard to broaden a search by finding variations of a word's ending, e.g. psych*
   
• Use " " (quotation marks) to tell the database to treat the enclosed words as an exact phrase, e.g. "educational psychology"
   
• Add "Study and teaching" as a search concept to find resources about the educational aspects of studying and teaching a particular subject
• Add grade or level of education (e.g. elementary, secondary) to your search strategy.

Use keyword "juvenile" to your catalog search to limit your results to items appropriate for K-12 students.  See the Division I and II pages for more resources and search tips. 

• For finding fiction titles, use the term "Juvenile fiction" combined with keywords that describe the topic of interest. For example:

"juvenile fiction"
AND
preschool

• For finding non-fiction literature, use the term "juvenile literature" keywords that describe the topic of interest. For example:

"juvenile literature"
AND
"early childhood education"

• Early childhood education

• Early childhood education AND Computer-assisted instruction

• Early childhood education AND Curriculum

• Early childhood education AND Literacy

• Education, Preschool

• Music -- Instruction and study AND Juvenile