Chapters 3 and 4 are the most difficult chapters and the quizzes are the most complex. Go over these questions after you have read the chapter and see if that helps you at all.
This slide deck explains why controlled vocabulary (Library of Congress subject headings) is so important:
1. QuickSearch: Using the far right or third drop-down menu under the QuickSearch box, what is the best strategy for finding (describe your search and the menu item you would use):
- A book by Tapscott on the digital generation?
- A book by Sandra Gilbert with a title that includes the word madwoman?
- A book by Land and Meyer?
- The style manual by the American Psychological Association?
- Any publication from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers?
- A book with the word inferno in the title, written by Brown?
- A book about introverts with the word quiet in the title?
- The book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?
2. QuickSearch: Use QuickSearch to search for the book titled How to win friends and influence people. Click on the details for that book. If you wanted to read other books on the same subject, which link(s) in the Details view should you click?
3. QuickSearch: Use QuickSearch to search for the book titled The future: six drivers of global change. Click on the details for that book. If you wanted to read other books on the same subject, which link(s) in the Details view should you click on?
4. QuickSearch: QuickSearch lets you refine or narrow your search results using links on the left side of the screen. Do a search on hurricane katrina. What are some criteria that can refine your search results in Quick Search?
5. Boolean operators (AND, OR and NOT) can be very confusing.
If you want to find information on trauma in childhood, if you just look for trauma, you will find lots of things (articles, books, etc) that are NOT about trauma in children. If you search for trauma AND children, you will get only those materials that have BOTH of the words in them. What you see as the darker blue section of the figure at the intersection of the circles is the universe that you would get of trauma and children. As you can see, you’re going to get fewer results than if you typed either in children or trauma by themselves.
Remember: When you connect words with the Boolean AND, you will get fewer results because you are getting results with BOTH words present in them.
If you wanted to find information on the growth of mobile technology usage in the past five years, you might start out with growth as one of your search terms. However, there are other terms that mean the same as growth. So the term growth in one article might be called development in another. So you want to make sure you get all the articles with both terms in them. If you look for growth OR development, you will be increasing the number of results—you’ll be getting all of the results that have either word in them, or all the blue areas.
Remember: When you connect words with the Boolean OR, you will get more results because you are getting results with either word in them.
Back to the question on the growth of mobile technology. You would want to search for the terms growth or development and you want those items that are about growth or development of mobile technology. You would couple the words growth and development using an OR—growth OR development with the subject of mobile technology:
6. Using Google Books: You need to find the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. All the copies in the library are checked out, so you check Google Books. This is what you see:
What are your options for this book?
So let’s look at another one. You cannot find the book Imperial life in the emerald city: inside Iraq’s green zone in the library. You look for it in Google Books and this is what you find:
But when you click on the button that says VIEW EBOOK, you see this:
What does that mean?
7. Call numbers: You know that call numbers are a little confusing. All those letters and numbers. You need to remember:
- B comes before BF comes before BL comes before
- After the letters, the numbers in the first line are numerical—not decimal. LC59 comes before LC100 comes before LC 250 comes before LC 1234
- On the second line, books are shelved by alphabetical order, but the numbers in the second line are decimals, as are any other number on a third line (unless it’s a date). So LC250/S54 comes before LC250/S6 comes before LC250/S7354.9.
So let’s try putting some call numbers in order:
And let’s try another group:
Now check the answers below to see how you did!
Answers to Question 1:
- tapscott AND digital generation——–using the menu item Anywhere in the record.
- gilbert AND madwoman——–Anywhere in the record
- land AND meyer——–As author/creator
- asimov AND robot——–Anywhere in the record
- american psychological association AND style——–Anywhere in the record
- institute of electrical and electronics engineers——–As author/creator
- inferno AND brown——–Anywhere in the record
- introverts AND quiet——–Anywhere in the record
- 7 habits of highly effective people——--In the title
Answer to question 2:
If you wanted to find books on the same subject, you would click on one of the links next to Subjects: Success; Persuasion (psychology); Leadership; Business communication.
Answer to question 3:
Click on one of the subjects listed in the record: Social change; Economic history—21st century; Technological innovations; Global environmental change; Globalization.
Answer to question 4:
You can only use the criteria that are listed on the left side of your search results to refine a search. So you can refine by Topic, Creator, Collection, Creation date, Resource type, Language, Classification. You cannot refine a search by popularity or by searching for another word within your search results, or by changing to a subject search.
Answer to question 6:
For Robinson Crusoe: If you look at the left hand side of the page, you see a red square that says EBOOK – FREE. That means you can download the whole text of this book right now!
For Imperial Life in the Emerald City: It means that you cannot get a free version of this book through Google Books. But—if you remember in the introductory chapter, we have a service called Interlibrary Loan, and you can request that book through that service.
Answers to Question 7:
If you have any questions about anything in this blog exercise or anything else in chapter 3, please contact me through the email function in Blackboard!!
Library 160 Spring II 2016 