Specific Faction Search

Topic: The Role of Children's Books in Elementary Education
Database: ERIC
(elementary school or grammar school or school library media center)
(curriculum or instruction or literacy)
(books or literature or fiction or nonfiction)
The facet that I think will get the least amount of hits: (elementary school or grammar school or school library media center) 70,033 hits
From here I will do a successive fraction search.
S1: add (curriculum or instruction or literacy) 33068 hits
S2: S1 and add (books or literature or fiction or nonfiction) 4471 hits
This is still too many hits so I decided to add more facets to my search.
S3: S2 and add (teacher or instructor) 3054 hits
S4: S3 and add (facilitate or aid or promote) 272 hits

I chose not to use truncation during this search, as I am noticing that my searches tend to retrieve large numbers of hits. As you can see, it didn't help very much because I still had to add two more search strings to the originals and still ended up with 272 hits! I'm noticing that most of these searches that we are learning about are very similar and in the end they search for basically the same search strings. This technique is more like the ones that I use in my everyday searching experiences. I usually start with an intial idea, then I add a little bit more as I refine my search, and sometimes I add even more to make it more specific. By the third time I usually have the search string that I should have started with. The specific faction technique definitly reflects that same strategy. I like it because it seems more natural to me.