Where are the articles?

So your professor tells you that there are wonderful databases full of articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers. Your job is to look up some and report on them. Where do you go?

The CSI Library Home Page (http://www.csi.edu/library)

Over on the left side, there is a reddish-brown column labeled "Research". Down a bit is a section labeled "Online Resources", and under that is the label for "Magazine & Journal Indexes". You can look at the list of databases either by subject or by title.

If you click "by Subject", the first category that you'll see is "General". Here are links to databases that cover all subjects, such as

• AP Images (a great source for news photos)
• NewsBank and ProQuest Newspapers
• ProQuest Central

Keep scrolling, and you'll see these categories

• Business
• Health & Medicine
• Humanities
• Science & Technology
• Social Sciences
• For Kids

If you click "by Title", you'll see the same list of database links, in alphabetical order.

When you are on campus, the links will take you directly to the database of your choice. When you are off campus, you'll be asked to log in with your CSI student login.

ProQuest Central - Basic Search

As you know, the CSI Library has a new lineup of online databases. Last January, the LiLI folks at the Idaho Commission for Libraries replaced the ones from the Gale Company. ProQuest is the biggest and most varied of the new databases. It is a good place to start for any information search. Here are a few pointers on how to use it.

There are three (3!) ways to get to ProQuest Central. On the Library home page you can either click
(1) by Subject, or
(2) by Title, or
(3) ProQuest Central

If you are on campus, the computer will take you straight to the search screen. If you are off campus, it will first ask you to log in with your CSI student login.




Here is a shot of the Basic Search screen.


The Basic Search looks for keywords and phrases in article citations (author names, article titles, journal titles, and abstracts). You can type single words, phrases, or combinations of the two. Here are some examples of search words you can type:

• nutrition


• ice cream


• ice cream and nutrition

Click Search Tips to see more examples, and more ways to type search words. Here are three variations that you can try:

1. Phrases. If your phrase has three or more words, put quotation marks around it, like this: "ice cream sundae" or "state of the union"
2. Truncation. Use an asterisk (*) to search for several words that start with the same letters, like this: sustainab* (this tells the computer to look for sustainable, sustainability, and sustainably)

Synonyms: If there are several related words that you want look for, you can group them in parentheses, and type "or" between them, like this: polar bears and (arctic or habitat or canada)

You can limit your results in two ways:

1. "Full text documents only": Not every article in this database is available in full text. Clicking this box will restrict your list of results to articles in full text. This is fine if you have a very tight deadline, but otherwise DO NOT use it. It will cut out too many good articles that the Library can get for you in a week or so.


2. "Scholarly journals, including peer-reviewed": This setting can be a big help when your instructor asks you to include scholarly, peer-reviewed, or professional journal articles in your list of cited references.

Last but not least, ProQuest Central is made up of a number of smaller databases. If you want to, you can search just in business publications, or science journals, or newspapers. To do this,
look at the "Database" line, just underneath the search box:

Click the down arrow and you'll see the complete list of all the databases thast go into ProQuest Central. Or, you can click the link to Select multiple databases and pick several to search at once.

Back at Work

It's been a long month. I'm back at work full time now, out of the cast and in a boot. I hope to be off of crutches soon!

A Slight Change of Plans

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a good Christmas holiday. Mine went very well, and I was all set to come back to work when life happened. I slipped on a patch of ice on the sidewalk near my house and fractured my left ankle. The doctor told me I did a VERY thorough job, breaking several bones! After 5 days in the hospital, I'm home, waiting for the swelling to go down enough for him to put it in a cast.

Needless to say, you won't find me at the Reference Desk for at least a few weeks, and I have no idea when I'll be back to full-time-in-person. I get to practice working as an online librarian, telecommuting from home. I intend to check my email several times a day, so please feel free to contact me if you have any reference questions. Please be patient waiting for my replies, as the turnaround time will be slower than usual.

And don't forget that the rest of the Library staff is very good at helping you with questions. There's always someone available at extension 6500.

I'll do my bit to continue to offer you reference service, and you can do your bit to help me keep from going stir crazy here at home!

Steve, The Invisible Gray-Haired Librarian

Citation help

Students often ask me for help citing the references for their papers. To help out at this stressful time of the semester, I have just added a link to the Library home page for Citation Help! This takes you to a page with links to the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) and other helpful websites and documents.

The link is over on the upper right side of the Library home page, between Library Tutorials and Ask A Librarian.



Here's another tip: For each reference, think of putting the citation together out of Lego bricks.

• There's usually one brick for the author (or authors)
  
• There's usually some sort of title, either a book or website title, or a combination of essay/book title or article/magazine title or web page/website title
  
• There's usually some sort of publishing organization
  
• There's the publication or copyright or "last updated" date
  
• Sometimes you include page numbers
  
• For any internet sites, there's also the date you looked them up
  

Each one of these takes a brick or two.

The colors of the bricks vary according to the punctuation that you use and the words that you capitalize. Look at each part of your citation separately. When you are formatting the names of the authors, don't worry about how to write the title. When you are writing down the title, don't worry about the publisher, or the web address. Only after you have lined up all your bricks is it time to put them together.

Oxford Reference Online

Once again, it's term paper time. Many of you have come by the Reference desk recently to ask for our help finding sources and puzzling out citation styles (which, by the way, is very satisfying work for us to do! Thanks!). Soon you will be sitting down in front of your computer to begin pulling your report together. Now is a good time to try out one of our electronic resources that you may have overlooked.

Oxford Reference Online is a one-stop reference library of dictionaries, thesauri, maps, and handbooks on all kinds of subjects. Here you can double check how to spell "erythrocyte", review the difference between a recession and a depression, look up a snappy quotation, or find a map of Mexico and a picture of its flag and a timeline of its history. It won't cure writer's block, but it can help you with that illustration or bit of detail that you need from time to time.

How do you find Oxford Reference Online?

• Start on the Library home page
• Scroll down and click the link to Oxford University Press (on the left, under Digital Books)
• Click the link to Oxford Reference Online: Premium Collection
• You can log in from home, too, with your CSI network login

From there, type your search words in the "Quick Search" box
or select one of these categories

English Dictionaries & Reference English Dictionaries & Thesauruses English Language Reference
Bilingual Dictionaries
Quotations
Maps & Illustrations
Timelines
Encyclopedia
Subject Reference Art & Architecture Biological Sciences Classics Computing Earth & Environmental Sciences Economics & Business Food & Drink History Law Literature Medicine Military History Mythology & Folklore Names & Places Natural History Performing Arts Physical Sciences & Mathematics Politics & Social Sciences Prehistory Religion & Philosophy Science

New Look for the Reference Desk

For a long time, I have wanted to make the old Reference Desk more open and approachable. The shelf made a wall around the corner, and the desktop was so deep that I felt I was sitting miles away.

Last week a crew of very skillful CSI carpenters worked a transformation! First, they walked all around it, checking all the angles and supports, saying, "Hmm". Then they set to work. They removed the shelf that made a barrier around the corner and sliced away part of the desk so that I will be closer to you when you come to ask a question. Then they replaced the molding and the painter came to stain the new wood, and it looks like new.



When you see the "new" desk, I hope you'll feel that there is one less barrier between you and the help that you need.