SFC Library -- Introduction to Library Research
- 1. INTRODUCTION TO LIBRARY RESEARCH SFC LIBRARY ___________________________________________________________ How do I find the SFC Library website? 1. library@sfc.edu 2. sfc.edu Academics Library 3. Google sfc library Everything you need for your research can be found on the library website. Take a moment to click on all the buttons and tabs. Explore the dropdown menus. Check out the FAQ page. http://library.sfc.edu/askalibrarian/faq Questions? Ask a Librarian. Don’t worry. You’re not wasting your time, or ours. Once you’ve become familiar with all the resources SFC Library has to offer, you’ll see how much easier your life is when you start working on your research paper.
- 2. STARTING THE PROCESS Okay. Now you’re an expert at navigating the SFC Library website and ready to do some searching. Let’s say you’re doing a research on ADVERTISING and need to find books and articles. Are you interested in finding general articles on advertising, online advertising, the role of advertising on society, how advertising affects the arts and commerce, etc.? The more narrow your search is, the more relevant results you will get. (Note: “Narrow” doesn’t necessarily mean “too specific”. Narrow means “in the ballpark” of what you’re looking for. Specific means “too many” details that may interfere with the results.) Let’s start with articles. Where do you find them? The library’s electronic databases (EBSCO, ProQuest, JSTOR, etc.) consist of multiple journals, which, in turn, consist of multiple articles. So, to find articles you can either search all the databases at once on the LIBRARY HOMEPAGE, search subject specific databases on the DATABASES page, or individual journals on the JOURNALS page.
- 3. Composing Keywords Let’s type each keyword / keyphrase into the Library Catalog search box, limit the search to Articles & Databases, and examine the results:
- 4. KEYWORD : ADVERTISING One million, two hundred seventy nine thousand, six hundred sixty two articles. Too many? You need to narrow your search.
- 5. KEYPHRASE + KEYWORD: “ONLINE ADVERTISING” SOCIETY Success! A little over seven thousand is better than a little over a million, wouldn’t you agree? Notice that “online advertising is set off with quotation marks. Why? To make sure you get only those articles that have the phrase “online advertising”, exactly the way you typed it. If you didn’t use quotation marks, the database would search not only for the phrase but also for the words “online” and “advertising” separately, which would flood you with more hits. Our goal is to get fewer results, not more.
- 6. KEYPHRASE + TWO KEYWORDS: “ONLINE ADVERTISING” INFLUENCE TEENAGERS 213 results. That’s more like it. Remember: The more specific your keywords / keyphrases are, the more relevant the results.
- 7. SEARCHING INDIVIDUAL DATABASES While the Library Catalog is set up to search all of our electronic databases at once, a professor might direct you to a specialized or “subject specific” database because the indexing of that database is more sophisticated and scholarly, or because it specializes in a specific subject or discipline. Here are a few examples: 1. ARTstor: A database of more than two million art images from museum collections. Includes photographs, costumes, illustrations, illuminated manuscripts, monuments and sculpture. 2. Literature Online: A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, 350 full-text literature journals, and other criticism and reference resources. 3. New York Times Historical: This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of politics, society and events from 1851-2007. 4. ProQuest : A database aggregator that includes 16 individual databases with articles on all major subjects. 5. EBSCOhost Web: A family of databases with articles in all major subject areas. Searching such database families as ProQuest and EBSCOhost is similar to doing the Library Catalog on the homepage. However, because each database makes its own tweaks to the search algorithms, the results may be different from the Library Catalog’s.
- 8. Note that the search process is the same, but ProQuest’s ranking is different from the Library Catalog’s. We suggest using the Catalog first, and then, if you don’t get relevant results, try the subject-specific or multi- disciplinary databases. Searching ProQuest
- 9. SEARCHING JOURNALS Unlike databases, you cannot find articles by searching all the journals at once. First, you have to find the journal you want to search. You can do that by browsing the journals by subject or searching for the journal by title. A subject browse for Business & Economics shows that the library has 85 journals on Advertising. Select the journal you want to search.
- 10. SEARCHING ADMEDIA ADMEDIA is part of the EBSCOhost family of databases. However, instead of searching all of the journals comprising the database, you’re only searching a single journal. Choose the date, volume and issue, and type your keywords in the search box.
- 11. ADMEDIA: THE RESULTS The top line indicates the journal, volume and issue you’re about to search. Type your keyword / keyphrase below. Remember that you’re searching only ONE journal, so you will not get as many results as when you’re searching the entire database.
- 12. NOW LET’S FIND SOME BOOKS When you search for online articles, the search engine looks for the words in the title as well as the text. That’s why you want to be specific. But it’s different with books. The Library Catalog cannot search inside either print or electronic books. It can only search the title field, the author field, or the description field of a book. Therefore, when you search for books you don’t want to be too specific, or you will get zero results.
- 13. PRINT BOOKS are located in the stacks (library cellar). Be sure to write down or take a photo of the book’s call number. Ask the Reference Librarian on duty if you need help. Here are instructions on how to read and download ELECTRONIC BOOKS (scroll down for all the relevant information.) http://library.sfc.edu/services/ebooks
- 14. SEARCHING THE WEB Search engines search the entire World Wide Web -- a sea of entertainment, news, social networking and information of all kinds. Whether you prefer Google, Bing or Yahoo -- you probably use a search engine every single day. Now that so many books, journals, magazines and newspapers are being published on the Internet, your favorite search engine can also dig up information to help you in your college classes. But, since publishers still need to make a living, books or articles that you come across via a search engine may not be free. And, it's often surprisingly hard to tell which websites are appropriate for college-level research. Library databases, on the other hand, were made especially for college-level research: they search collections of journals, magazines, newspapers, ebooks (and more!) -- often focused on a particular subject. Nevertheless, there are a growing number of legitimate research guides, full-text collections, and other scholarly tools on the free web worth exploring. The challenge, with hundreds of millions of indexed sites, is finding the right ones. Fortunately, there are a number of search techniques that researchers can use to refine their Google search results. Here’s a good guide from MIT Libraries on how to use Google Search Operators. http://libguides.mit.edu/google You can also find Google Special Syntaxes on the SFC Library Blog: https://ourlibraryblog.wordpress.com/google-search/
- 15. GOOGLE SCHOLAR Google Scholar provides a way to find articles across the world of scholarly research. Unfortunately, most pages will only provide an abstract, not full text -- unless SFC Library subscribes to the journal that contains the article you’re looking for. Let’s search Google Scholar for the same keywords and phrases: “online advertising” influence teenagers To connect SFC Library with Google Scholar from off-campus, go to: scholar.google.com Click on Settings Click on Library Links Search for St Francis College Library. Place a checkmark next to Full-Text@SFC Library Click SAVE. You only have to do this once.
- 16. CITING SOURCES It's important to cite sources you use in your research for several reasons: * By listing your sources you show the readers that you’ve done proper research. * By giving credit to other researchers you show yourself to be a responsible scholar. * By quoting words and ideas used by other authors you avoid plagiarism. * By citing your sources accurately, you allow your reader to track them by way of footnotes, a bibliography or reference list. Visit SFC Library’s Citation page (library.sfc.edu/citation) for instructions on how to cite books, electronic articles and websites, format in-text citations, and prepare a Works Cited / Reference / Bibliography page.
- 17. COPYRIGHT What is Copyright? Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States. (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including. literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This. protection is available to both published and unpublished works. What is Fair Use? Fair use permits the use of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder under certain circumstances. For libraries, educational institutions, and the public, the Fair Use Doctrine is the most important limitation on the rights of the copyright owner—the "safety valve" of US copyright law. Copyright Advisory Office at Columbia University Libraries provides a lot of excellent information for students and faculty. https://copyright.columbia.edu/basics/copyright-quick-guide.html