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Hi everyone. This week's assignment asks you to use our library catalog to find
some books so I wanted to take a moment to walk you through the catalog and show you
how to find the information that you'll need to complete this week's assignment.
This week's assignment is due Wednesday, May 1st at 11:59pm Pacific time
It's worth 50 points.
What you need to do is go to the Pierce College library website to get to the catalog.
I'll show you how to do that in a moment.
You need to find five books that contain information related to your research question
from Assignment 2.
Your sources can be print or electronic, circulating or reference
but they have to be books.
You're going to record the search statement or search statements
that you used to find the books
but you don't actually need to go and get them or check them out.
All you're doing is filling in this worksheet with information
about the books. So, just to emphasize,
you don't have to actually go get the books,
you're just going to search for them in the catalog and write some things down about them.
You're definitely welcome to ask for help with this assignment.
You can call either library to talk to a librarian.
You're also welcome to contact me if you have questions.
This isn't a test of how to use the catalog,
it's just designed to get you in there and get you familiar with how it works.
There's a hint right here on your assignment.
It says that search statements work best when they include one or two terms,
and you'll use the basic search only.
I'm going to walk through this example real quick and then
I'll jump over to the catalog on the website.
This is an example of what you'll be filling in with your research question
and then your search statements.
With the books that you find, you'll fill in
the call number, the title, the author,
whether the book is circulating or reference, and whether it's print or electronic.
So circulating just means the book can be checked out. Reference means
the book stays in the library.
Most reference books are things like encyclopedias and dictionaries,
the kinds of things that
you don't typically want to take home with you anyway.
In this example, our search statement was "global warming AND ocean*"
These were some of the books that were found.
I'm going to jump over to the Pierce College website.
From the Pierce College website, there are two ways to get to
the library site. You can go under shortcuts, it's right there.
Or you can go under Resources, there's also a link to Library.
Either will take you to the same place.
Here we are on the library website.
We have a search box
right here in the middle of our site.
It searches our catalog for books that we own.
This search also searches for articles,
ebooks, DVDs. It's not just print books.
For my example research question,
I decided to research, "What are the health effects of a vegetarian diet?"
I thought for my first search statement, I would try
"vegetarianism AND diet"
to see what comes up so let's try that.
The first thing to notice is that, with this search,
I got 1700, almost 1800 results. But
that includes about 1700 articles. If you look over here on the left-hand side
it tells me that, of those nearly 2000 results, only 40 of them are books.
Remember, this assignment just wants you to find books. I'm going to go ahead
and click this box over here to limit it just to books and ebooks.
It looks like I received 40 results that are books.
Of those 40, 10 of them are ebooks.
So that means I got 30 print books, 10 ebooks. For this assignment, I could use either, so it's not going to be a problem.
Just to illustrate how searches can be different
based on the terms that you use, let's try
"vegetarianism AND nutrition"
So I got slightly fewer results. If I look over here on the left-hand side,
instead of 40 books total, I got 27.
"Nutrition" seems like it brings back slightly fewer results
than "diet." Keep in mind I'm telling the catalog that I want it to bring back
any books or any results that have anything to do with vegetarianism
and this other topic.
One of the things we talked about was that "OR" is the search term that gets
you more results.
So if I typed in "vegetarianism OR nutrition", I'm telling
the catalog, "Bring me back any
books that have anything to do with vegetarianism OR any books
that have anything to do with nutrition. Either of those would be fine."
So I should get far more results this time. Let's try that.
Wow, yeah, when I look over here on the left-hand side, next to "Book"
it says I got over 900 results
when I search for "vegetarianism OR nutrition."
When I look at my list of results, though, it looks like most of these
first few books are just general nutrition books. They might mention something about
vegetarianism but they aren't specifically about my topic.
So now that you've seen some of the different ways you can use search terms
we can actually get in and start looking at some results.
Let's see here. Let's say that I wanted to look at
Marion Nestle's Food Politics, this third result here. If I click on the title
it'll take me to the listing for this book.
It tells me that it's on the circulating shelves at the Puyallup campus
library and here's the call number.
In "Edition/Format", it has a picture of a book and it says book. It's sitting there on
the circulating shelves. So when I go to fill in
my assignment
I'll fill in the call number, the title would be Food Politics, the author would be Marion Nestle.
Circulating or reference, I know it's circulating because
it said so right there in the catalog. Print or electronic,
it's print because it said so right next to that listing.
There's a picture of a book there.
If I go back to my results...
Let's say I just want to look at ebooks. I could unclick
the "Books" option and just keep
"eBooks" option clicked.
Let's see here.
"Health, Nutrition, and Food Demands"--let's look at this ebook.
I know that this is an ebook because it says so right here.
There's an orange E
over the picture of the book. It says "eBook."
When I look at the call number, instead of giving me a campus location,
it says "Electronic Book."
It's a little confusing because it does still have a call number, but if I went to
the shelf and looked for that number, I wouldn't find physical book on the
shelf because it's an electronic book. So this is how you can tell if what you're
looking at is electronic or print.
Let's go back.
We'll look at books again.
Let's see. "The Yale Guide to Children's Nutrition."
It looks like this is at both campuses. It says circulating shelves. Here's the call number.
If this was a reference book, it would say "Reference Shelves" over here so that
is how you can tell whether something is circulating or reference.
They'll tell you right here
in this information about the book.
This should be enough information to get you started to get into the catalog,
to find books, and to record information about them.
I think the thing you have to be most careful with is that this catalog
will bring back articles as well
and we're not looking at those right now. We're just looking at books
and ebooks. So make sure that your results that you're looking at
are just books. Then you'll fill in the your worksheet right here, save it, and
upload it to Canvas.
If you have any questions or if there's anything I can do to help, like I said
you're welcome to contact me.
You're also welcome to call the library and speak with a librarian if you need help
using the catalog. Thanks!