Closing the Loop on Questions from Planning Councils

Someone from the Agency Planning Council (APC) attends each of our regional and department planning council meetings, and sometimes they take questions from those meetings back to others in the Agency to get the answers. Instead of just reporting findings to the council who raised the question, APC will now use The Connection to “close the loop” so the entire agency can benefit from the process.

This week’s question is: Is there a way to improve search function when I search the Agency’s library catalog?

From Susan Schrader, Director of Resources and Library Services
There are some cool features to help staff and teachers either browse or search directly for resources in the Heartland AEA library. Start at the Agency’s website, click Library & Digital Resources then click Search Library Catalog.

First, staff can limit search results by choosing Professional Book in the Limit to Format: pull-down menu. 

When a name, term or phrase (in quotes) is entered, the system automatically searches the title, series, author, keyword, annotation and subjects. We try to also use the “trendy” terms, “Iowa language” and acronyms as keywords so staff and teachers will quickly retrieve the best results.

Staff can also do an Advanced search and choose any of the limiters mentioned above.


If you want to go beyond guest access and reserve materials yourself, call the Heartland AEA library and we’ll set up a password and give you a quick tutorial.

The next generation of searching is also available with a small (and growing) collection of 19 professional ebooks in Mackin VIA. “X-ray vision” searches every word in the ebook when any term, phrase or name is entered. It’s like staring at a shelf of books and knowing that page 13 of one book, page 213 of a second book and page 66 of a third book have the information you need before you even touch the book!

Go to the MackinVIA website
Log in with the Heartland AEA online database username/password
Click Groups, and you’ll see the 19 titles

Here’s an example: Do a search on “formative assessment” and with a single click you can go directly to the page(s) with “formative assessment” already highlighted for you.

Quality teaching in a culture of coaching, pages 205, 207
Making number talks matter, page 168
Checking for understanding, pages 2, 3, 7, 12, 80, 84, 85, 121, etc.
Guided instruction, pages x, xi, 19, 20, 118, 128, etc.
Rigorous reading, pages 134, 137, 179, 199-201, 211
Better learning through structured teaching, pages 6, 36, 38, 50, 61, 62, 90, etc.
Plus more.

If you don’t find what you need, give the library staff a call, and they will be happy to help you! Or, they may add it to the collection, and you’ll receive an email notice to be the first to check it out.