Where do I look for books and articles?

Your teacher assigned a research paper and the directions say that you can only use two Internet sources.  Why? and where else can you look?  What other kinds of information sources are there?

As we all know, the Internet is full of junk, nonsense, and misinformation.  (It also contains quite a lot of good quality information, but finding that will be the subject of another blog post.)  The basic problem is that authors can post anything they want, without any editing.  Your teacher wants you to read sources that have been reviewed by editors and had their facts checked before being published.  More likely to be accurate that way.

What is an "Internet source"?  Basically, anything you look up using a search engine like Google.  Our ebooks, articles in online magazine databases, and streaming videos count as published sources.

1. The Library Catalog
This is where you look up the books, DVDs, music CDs, and other publications that are kept in the Library. Take a look at the short online tutorials on the Library home page (under Help) if you feel you need some pointers. Each item that you find in the catalog has a call number that tells you where to find it on the shelf.  It starts with the name of the section: Main, Ref, Large, DVD, etc.  After that come letters and numbers that stand for the subject and the author, and the year it was published.

For example, the call number for Washington: A Life looks like this:

E312.C484 2010

E312 = E300's are for the American Revolutionary period; 312 is for George Washington
C484 is for the author, Ron Chernow
2010 is the publication year

The first time you go into the book stacks, ask one of the Library staff to help you, then the arrangement will make sense.

2. Ebooks
The Library has several thousand ebooks, in addition to the printed books.  They are all listed in the Library Catalog.  See my blog entry from November 2012 for instructions on how to get at them.

3. Magazines, Newspapers, Journals, Oh My!
Click "Databases by Subject" to see the list of all the databases the Library has to offer. Between them they give you access to articles from thousands of magazines and journals, most of which you will not find for free on Google.  See the tutorials page for directions.  If you find an article that is not available in full text, it may be in another database, or the Library can get it for you.  (See the Library Services page for the description of our Interlibrary Loan service.)

Thinking in Keywords

  This lesson is about brainstorming any topic.  An important step in this process is to learn to think in keywords rather than in whole questions.  There are several reasons to do this:

• Writers use different words to describe the same ideas, or may put them in different order
•  Internet search engines look at main words and skip small ones
• Some sources cover aspects of your topic, but others will focus on one small part

Try out these three steps:

1.  State your question or topic
2. Pick out the keywords in the question or topic
3.  Add to your list of keywords by thinking of synonyms and related terms (don’t forget singular and plural forms, too)

 Here are some examples of search topics and relevant keywords:

Topic	Keywords in the Topic	Related Keywords
What are some ways to save energy at home?	Ways, save, energy, home	Ways: way, methods, technology Save: reduce, bill, bills, cheaper, green Energy: power, resources, utilities, heat, light, lighting, electricity, wood, gas, fireplace Home: house
What caused the recession?	Caused, recession	Caused: cause, start, started, “set off” Recession: downturn, “economic conditions”, housing, “wall street”, investments, mortgages
Breast cancer	Breast, cancer, “breast cancer”	Breast: mammary Cancer: Neoplasm, etiology, diagnosis, epidemiology, occurrence,
Are there advantages to being bilingual?	Advantages, bilingual	Advantages: advantage, benefit, benefits Bilingual: “second language”, “two languages”

What do you do with the keywords?  See the tutorials for the Library Catalog and the online magazine databases to see some examples.