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What do you (want to) know?

The VT Libraries for History Grad Students Bruce Pencek <bpencek@vt,edu> x 1-2140 (Newman Library 3033) x 1-5806 (Major Williams 105) 4 Sept 2003. What do you (want to) know?. What sort of library instruction have you had previously, anywhere? What did it cover?

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What do you (want to) know?

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  1. The VT Libraries for History Grad StudentsBruce Pencek<bpencek@vt,edu>x 1-2140 (Newman Library 3033)x 1-5806 (Major Williams 105)4 Sept 2003

  2. What do you (want to) know? • What sort of library instruction have you had previously, anywhere? What did it cover? • What do you remember about it that “worked” for you in using the library (any library) and its tools? What didn’t work for you? • What kind of information do you think you’ll need to know most about while a grad student here? • What techniques or tips would you like to learn about?

  3. Start at the library homepage <www.lib.vt.edu> • Black bars on every page connect to • Addison (online catalog) • Questions/forms: hold/recall, storage/courier, stack search • Hours: Newman, branches • Online reference: LiveRef (chat), AskUs (email) • All library pages color-coded • Online resources: indexes, databases, e-journal access • Subject pages: research gateways • Services • Research skills andinstruction

  4. Subject pages: your research gateways • 8 broadly thematic groups, if you’re feeling your way into a subject • A-Z list behind the green meatball if you know the key discipline <www.lib.vt.edu/subjects/atoz.htm> • Which ones might be your points of departure? • Subject librarian contact information for each page

  5. Online resources • “Article searching” lists our $ubscription electronic indexes and full-text databases. • Electronic journals database finds what journals we have access to, through what provider, for what dates – and links to them. • Reference links include citation guides and abbreviation decoders. • Newspapers available at VT (most in microform) • Electronic theses and dissertations for VT and many other institutions.

  6. Services • Circulation/reserve: borrowing privileges, nonbook media, storage/courier … • ILLiad – create an interlibrary loan profile and exploit the service • Set up your off-campus access to library subscriptions (Proxy server good. “MyVT” bad.) • Floorplans: the architects screwed us. Maps and guides are near the doors, elevators, and stairs. • And especially: ask for help at the first or fourth (bridge) reference desks

  7. Research skills resources help you teach and learn • Use the services for faculty/GTAs gateway • Handouts include cheat sheets for electronic resources, finding aids for microform collections and print reference works • Tutorials and tips for conducting effective, efficient research • Text: Seven steps • Freshman level: TILT • Library school in a box: Information Skills Modules

  8. Avoid information constipation • The most important part of research, using any medium: think it through first(research design!) • Make hunches based on what you already know (theory and hypothesis formation…) • Use a textbook or reference tool (eg, encyclopedia to get just enough background to begin thinking). • Talk out background and hunches to discover what parts fit together and why.

  9. Think about … … where and why to start looking for information relevantto your (hypo)thesis Ask yourself: • What kinds of information do I need? • If I were information about X, where would I be?

  10. Talk to the tools by asking… • What terms describe the information I want? • Start with terms for key concepts. Include • Synonyms (including historical usages) • Broader/narrower terms (and note their relation to your concepts) • Variant, obsolete, and foreign spellings • How do your concepts relate to one another? • Does your tool have a feature to combine terms after your searches, or must you think out Boolean combinations?

  11. F’rinstance… *Though it is an option in JSTOR (where it is called “near”) and the LexisNexis full-text databases (several “w/ ” choices), most databases do not offer proximity/adjacency searching.

  12. Explore key indexes and databases • America: History and Life (US, Canada)and Historical Abstracts (world since late Medieval): indexes with links-out to e-journals • Use same interface; relatively clumsy • International Medieval Bibliography: interdisciplinary • JSTOR: fulltext of major journals in many fields, from first issue to 3-5 years before present • WorldCat: the closest thing there is to a global library catalog: explore the universe of writing on a topic; authoritative subject headings; what libraries own a book/journal/other item. • Part of FirstSearch family of databases

  13. Examine the index/database • What kinds of documents does it handle? • What information does it provide about a document? • What features does it offer to help you assess a document’s relevance to you? • How does it connect you to the document? • Scope of coverage (dates, but also contents – sometimes “full text” isn’t so full) • Relation to other finding aids, including printed tools

  14. Web vs subscription databases • Quality control of sources and indexing (professional norms; market-enforced quality of subscriptions vs self-publishing model of WWW) • Coverage: as much as 80% of WWW content technically invisible -- and no search engine captures more than 40% of the visible pages • Search engines vs subject directories/gateways/portals (eg, VT subject pages, UCR Infomine, UCSB Voice of the Shuttle, Wisconsin Internet Scout)

  15. Search models: TV Guide or • Tradeoff between precision (relevance to your need) and recall (comprehen-siveness, including irrelevancies) • Structured data resources (e.g., indexes, library catalogs) emphasize precision through fields – You have to decide up front what might be relevant and search accordingly (cf. “GIGO” principle) • “controlled vocabulary”: subject headngs, descriptors, thesauri

  16. … channel surfing? • Unstructured data resources (eg, full-text datbases like LexisNexis, InfoTrac; web search engines) look for word frequency and location. • Power tool: proximity searching (search words near one another) • Problem: literalness/pattern matching of terms handled differently in different tools (eg, “Nez Perce” vs “Nez Percé”) • Metadata make Web look more structured, but it depends on producer adding it in standardized forms. • See what “Open Archives Initiative” metadata standard makes possible at www.oaister.org (View source code of retrieved document to see metadata,) • Solid tips for creators of digital documents: “Digital Best Practices” <digitalwa.statelib.wa.gov/newsite/best.htm> • “Findable” WWW documents conform to W3C HTML (etc) standards that distinguish appearance from structure.

  17. Your key library contacts • Bruce Pencek <bpencek@vt.edu>: social sciences librarian • Jennifer Gunter <jgunter@vt.edu>: special collections coordinator And a cast of … dozens

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