Catalogs

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Catalogs

• There are three primary ways to find books.
• DSU Online Catalog Locate books in
  Roberts-LaForge Library
• WorldCat Locate books in any library
• NetLibrary Locate electronic books

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DSU Online Catalog

• Remember when using the catalog to use the search
  strategies that you learned in Week 5.
• What will follow are screen shots of the catalog
  that will take you through the entire searching
  process.

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From the Librarys home page, click on Library
Catalog
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Remember that you can do subject or keyword
searches. In the catalog, a keyword search is
called words or phrase.
Consult Week 5s notes to determine the
difference between keyword and subject searches
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To find out more about each title, click on Full
Details to the left of each record.
At the top of each record, youll find the call
number which is what youll need to write down to
go find the book
At the bottom of each record, youll find the
location.
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When you click on Full Details, youll see the
Item Information tab first. This includes author,
title, and publication information. Youll also
see the location information again.
By clicking on the Catalog Record tab, youll
see even more information about the book. Youll
see all of the subjects (located at the bottom)
along with any content information. If you click
on any of the subject terms, youll then get a
list of all books with the subject that you
clicked. Subjects will be listed as Subject
Term or Personal Subject.
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• More about the
• Catalog Record
• The subjects are a great way to find related
  books.
• Not every record will be as informative as this
  example. Some records dont contain a Contents
  section at all.
• Remember that every idea and concept in a book
  cant be expressed in the subject terms alone do
  keyword searches as well. This will open up all
  of the contents to you and allow you to find
  words that may not be listed as the official
  subject term of the book.

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For example, if you do the following subject
search,
Youll get Zero results.
However
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If you do the same search, but as a keyword
search,
Youll get 26 results!
This at least shows you the importance of doing
both searches. The only way to know everything
thats in a book is by actually looking at it.
The catalog records can get you only so far.
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Tips for finding more information

• Remember to look at all subject terms and
  contents. Those are words and ideas that you can
  use to find more material.
• Also, to find more information about your topic
  when using the catalog, its also a good idea to
  put your topic in context of something larger.
• For example, if you were looking for all of the
  books that you could find on Michelangelo, you
  would do both subject and keyword searches for
  his name.
• However, does that mean that youve found every
  book that discusses Michelangelo? NO! NO! NO!

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Take for instance, this example
Even though this record doesnt mention
Michelangelo specifically, you can bet that it
does have a section on him. So, think about your
topic (remember the first key to finding
sources!) and broaden the search. In this
example, its Renaissance art. In our George
Washington example, you could search for American
Presidents and find something on GW. The
catalog records will not and cannot hold all of
the information thats in a book. So youre going
to have to do some leg work in order to find
everything on your topic.
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In the catalog you can also do a power search.
This allows you to search in more than one field
at a time. It also provides effective limiters.
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One of the best limiters that you can use is
type. That allows you to limit your search to
a particular type of source. As you can see,
theres much more in the catalog than just
books. A good example of why you would use this
limiter is if you were looking for a Reference
book on your topic. In the Power Search, you can
limit your results to get back only reference
books.
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Not every book on your topic can be found in
Roberts-LaForge Library. Knowing that, youll
want to also search WorldCat, a database used to
locate books in other libraries in other
words, to find books that we dont have. To get
started in WorldCat, click on Electronic
Databases.
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On the Electronic Databases by Subject page, use
the Quick Jump menu to select WorldCat. Later
on, well use the subject list to find databases,
but if you know the title, it is quickest to use
the title menu.
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As you see, this looks very different from DSUs
catalog, but you search it the same exact way.
You can do author, title, subject, and keyword
searches just like in the librarys catalog.
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One of the nice features of WorldCat is that it
marks which books DSU owns, so you can easily
identify the ones that youll need to get from
another library.
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If after looking at the record, you decide that
you want to use this book, youll have to get it
through Interlibrary loan. From WorldCat, its
simple to request. Simply click on the ILL button
and follow the directions.
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Before you request anything from ILL, you want to
make sure that its a book that you really want.
WorldCat has some of the same evaluative features
that you use in DSUs catalog. In each record,
youll find an abstract or a contents section.
Youll also find a list of subjects.
Each of those items can help you determine that
sources usefulness, but they can also point you
in the right direction to find related resources.

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The last book type that we will discuss are
electronic books. These are provided through a
database called NetLibrary. To search for
electronic books, you simply use the Library
Catalog.
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Its simple to determine which books are
electronic. The eb at the end of each call
number denotes that it is an electronic book.
To access the electronic book, simply click on
the URL link at the bottom of the record.
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After clicking on View this Ebook, youll see
the actual book. The table of contents opens on
the left. The pages will be on the right. You
navigate by either browsing the table of
contents, or by searching using the Search tab
located directly above the contents.
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If you want to search only for electronic books
without using the librarys catalog, you can
access NetLibrary directly from the Electronic
Databases page.