First Year Seminar Cold Case: Mystery

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First Year SeminarCold Case Mystery History
in the Theatre

• Library Research Strategies
• Spring 2007
• Charlotte Johnson Jones
• Social Sciences Librarian
• UMW Libraries

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In this session you will learn . . .

• Some criteria for evaluating information
• How to use the library catalog to find books on
  your topic
• How to use databases to find articlesboth
  scholarly and popular.
• How to use the Pearl Gathering / 1,2,3 search
  strategy
• How to use call numbers to browse sections of the
  library

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Types of information neededfor college
assignments

• Primary
• Scholarly
• Fact

• Secondary
• Popular
• Opinion

See Primary and Secondary Sources and Popular vs
Scholarly How to Tell the Difference between a
Magazine and a Journal
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Pearl Gathering / 1, 2, 3

• A three-step search strategy that works in almost
  all library catalogs and databases
• Do a keyword search
• Find a pearl an article that is exactly what
  you need
• Follow subject headings in the record about the
  pearl to find more like it

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Pearl Gatheringin the Library Catalog
Links to the library catalog are located across
the top of the every page of the UMW Libraries
web site. You can do a Basic, Keyword, or Reserve
search.
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Pearl Gatheringin the Library Catalog
Step 1) Do a keyword search. Suppose you want are
looking for books that might help solve the
mystery of whether Thespis was the first actor.
You already know that there is information in the
book The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy.
So why not use greek tragedy as your keywords?
Since this is a phrase, enter it in a single
search box.
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Step 2) Find a pearl
There are 173 results for your keyword search.
Scan them until you find one that looks like it
very close to what you need. Thats the pearl.
Click on full record to see more about this item.
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3) Notice the Subject
Use the call number to find the book in the
library. The UMW Libraries use Library of
Congress call numbers . . . not the Dewey Decimal
system. Need help finding a book? Ask at the
Information Desk on the first floor.
The Library of Congress develops standard Subject
Headings to describe books in library catalogs.
These headings can be complicated and are
certainly not intuitive. Click on the Subject to
see more items on this topic.
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Keep following the links
Follow this link to see records for all 88 items
that are either historical or critical treatments
of Greek tragedy.
Use these links to scroll through the Subject
Headings 10 or more at a time to see other
aspects of Greek drama in the catalog.
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Use call numbers to browse
Notice that many of these books have the same
beginning, or root, in the call number. Locate
this area of the library and browse the books on
the shelves to discover more.
Find these find more like them.
Stacks means the shelves on the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st
floors, for books that are available to check out.
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Notice the NetLibrary Book
UMW Libraries subscribe to almost 43,000
NetLibrary e-books, which you can read and search
online. Click full record for the online link to
this book.
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Click the Online infoto access the e-book
Click
Notice a new subject, Theater Greece History.
This would be another good path to follow.
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Use databases to find articles
Several databases are recommended on the
Libraries Theatre Dance research page. Lets
use Gale PowerSearch.
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Gale PowerSearch
It sounds strange, but you usually want to begin
in Gale PowerSearch by using the Change Databases
feature.
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Throw out irrelevant databases
Change Databases lets you see all the databases
PowerSearch is set to search at once. Uncheck the
ones that dont make sense for your search, like
Computer Database or General Business File ASAP.
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Switch to Advanced Search
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Advanced Search has more options and features
You can easily enter two concepts together, like
Christopher Marlowe AND murder.
You can set limits and request only documents
with full text, or only peer-reviewed (scholarly)
publications. Limiting to full text, while easy,
means that you might miss a really good article
in your research.
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Notice how results are sorted
Magazines (popular) Academic Journals
(scholarly) News (popular)
Some articles are full text. Other records only
have citations or abstracts.
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Use Locate Journal Article link
Click to see if this article is available in the
Libraries online collection or in the library
building.
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Locate Journal Articlealways opens the same
pop-up
Be sure to allow pop-ups!
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The citation is at the top of the box
This means that the Libraries own this journal in
some formatpaper, microfiche, or microfilm.
Click on the link to use the catalog to figure
out how and where.
This row indicates that The Sixteenth Century
Journal is part of our online JSTOR collection.
If the Article link takes you right there, great.
If not, play around with the other links.
Last resort? Interlibrary Loan