The following is support material related to a library instruction session conducted by a library instructor and a BHCC Behavioral Science Department course instructor.
This class session is as much about what you locate, retrieve, and produce for your instructor as it is about the process you follow to deliver the end product.
For today's session you have been asked by your instructor to find articles on smoking, a topic in psychology.
The first step: Plan your search for information (Plot Your Destination over the “Sea of Information”)
It's helpful to organize and have a plan of some kind before you "plunge into" your search. Here are some important tips for BEFORE you start:
• Read ENTIRE assignment and ask your instructor if you don't understand any of it! (This may sound overly basic, but Mr. Gordon knows of examples where students submitted incomplete assignments - in GRADUATE SCHOOL!)
• Do "brainstorming" on paper about the sources you might consult, and also make a small plan for how you'll search for information. Here's a sample "brainstorm" and plan, although yours should be more detailed. (The idea is to get yourself thinking! Your "brainstorms" and plans will get better the more you do!):
SAMPLE "BRAINSTORM": Hmm. The assignment says I need to find an article that supports smoking - from any source. This is interesting! I've never read anything in the paper that supports smoking! I wonder if a cigarette company's web site has something - they want to sell the product. Maybe the website that posted Wanda Hamilton's article has additional articles in favor of smoking. I also have to find an article that says smoking is bad. This should be easier. The government's put warning labels on cigarette boxes and cigarette ads. I wonder if there are official government studies. I might be able to find these on the web, or in a good encyclopedia article about nicotine.
SAMPLE PLAN: First, I'll browse the shelves and try to find an article in an encyclopedia about smoking Second, I'll try to find some good articles from the last few years about smoking
IMPORTANT WARNING: Your assignment asks you to fully identify the 2 articles on smoking you decide to use. Plan for this at the beginning of your search by writing down the complete identifying information for every source you consult. (If you don't do this, and then later want to use an article which has incomplete bibliographic information, YOU WILL NEED TO FIND THE COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHIC INORMATION, WHICH MAY TAKE HOURS!)
Finding Information: Looking In Books - Two (2) complementary approaches to looking in books
Approach 1: BROWSE THE SHELVES - At BHCC Library or ANY Library! Here are a few books in the BHCC Library that probably have chapters or articles on smoking:
Encyclopedia of Psychology REF BF31 .E52 2000
Magill's encyclopedia of social science: psychology REF BF31 .M33 2003
Encyclopedia of human biology REF QP11.E53 1997
Encyclopedia of Human nutrition REF QP141.E526 1999
Encyclopedia of education REF LB15.E47 2003
Important tips when browsing shelves:
* Books are arranged on the shelf by subject - via a CALL NUMBER assigned to the book! (A book's call number is like an address!)
* Reference books do not circulate, and have the call# prefix REF.
* Many (but NOT all!) books on the same topic have similar call numbers, and so are shelved near each other. Therefore, get the call number of ONE book that interests you, and then look at books shelved next to this book.
* Keep in mind that many books have table of contents and indexes. USE THESE TO LOOK FOR INFORMATION SPECIFICALLY ABOUT SMOKING! (This tip is particularly important for reference books! There are reference books on virtually every topic!)
Approach 2: USE THE CATALOG - At BHCC Library or ANY Library! The catalog is a tool that lets you find physical books (and other items) in a library - every physical book has a record in the catalog! A catalog does NOT contain the full-text of books!
If you haven't seen the library consortium Web based catalog then now is as good a time as any. NOBLE , and by extension, the Bunker Hill Community College Library Online Catalog , are easy to get to if you have a connection to the Internet and you're using a WWW browser.
Important tips when using the catalog:
• Try a keyword search using one or more words that describe your topic. (For example, "smoking", "nicotine") This search looks for every appearance of the word(s) in the catalog, and "pulls up" all the records that contain the words. (There are entire books on smoking! This is how to find them!)
• You will always need at least the call number of the book to find the book on the shelf! (We still strongly recommend copying all the information down!)
• When you find a catalog record for 1 book about smoking or nicotine, then click on the book's SUBJECT, to "pull up" all books with the same subject!
Finding Information: Looking for Articles in Information Databases
Information Databases contain high-quality information (STUFF NOT FOUND ON THE PUBLIC WEB) - such as full-text articles from the Boston Globe, and from magazines and journals like Time, Psychology Today, and many others. Yet, databases can be confusing, because libraries usually have a lot of databases, and you need to know a bit about how to search the databases to find what you need.
Use BHCC Library subscription databases to find articles, at http://www.noblenet.org/bhcc/databases.htm Select the database you want. If you’re OFF campus (at work or home), you will be asked to enter your 14-digit library barcode number and your last name before you can access the database. YOU MUST HAVE A BHCC ID THAT HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AT THE LENDING SERVICES DESK IN ORDER TO ACCESS THE DATABASES FROM OFF CAMPUS.
Here are some suggested databases to try: (THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST!)
- Facts.com and CQ Researcher - Both have good overview articles on many topics. (very much like overview articles in print encyclopedias) If you find something, you'll be well rewarded. HOW TO GET TO THEM: Click on their links from the BHCC Library Databases Web Page
- EBSCO's Health Source-Consumer Edition. - Has some good articles on smoking which are not overly technical. HOW TO GET TO IT: Click Ebsco from the BHCC Library Databases Web Page and then click Health Source - Consumer Edition
- Lexis/Nexis - Has full-text of articles from many newspapers, as well as other resources. Be aware that no subjects are assigned - all you can do is search for words.
HOW TO GET TO IT: Click Lexis/Nexis from the BHCC Library Databases Web Page. To
search newspapers, you will then click on "News" in the left column, to take you to the search
screen for newspapers.
- Infotrac Web's Health Reference Center Academic - Gives a wide variety of health information. Be aware that this database includes articles from technical journals.
HOW TO GET TO IT: Click Infotrac Web from the BHCC Library Databases Web Page and then click Health Reference Center Academic from the database menu page.
- Infotrac Web's Gale Virtual Reference Library - Provides the text of overview articles from specialized encyclopedias.
HOW TO GET TO IT: Click Infotrac Web from the BHCC Library Databases Web Page and then click Gale Virtual Reference Library from the Infotrac Web database menu page.
Important tips when using databases:
- Some databases assign subjects to their articles. This means if you find one article on a subject,
you can then click on the article's SUBJECT, to "pull up" all articles assigned the same subject!
It is also possible to browse subject lists in these databases.
- As with book catalogs, you also can try a text or keyword search using one or more words that
describe your topic. This search looks for every appearance of the word(s) in the record, and "pulls up" all the records that contain the words. (You may get a lot of articles, so we recommend using more words) Typically, you can use this method with every database.
- Databases do NOT contain every article that has been written about smoking! Typically, only
recent articles are in databases (articles published after 1980, or even later)
- If you are interested in searching for articles that appeared in the Boston Globe, or the New York
Times, or a favorite magazine or journal, THEN search our alphabetical list of all magazines,
journals, and newspapers we get - either in print or in a database, at
http://ph8vq3lq6p.search.serialssolutions.com/
- Many databases allow you to SAVE an article to DISK, or EMAIL the article to yourself. (This
is particularly important when you don't have a printer available.)
- Always remember: databases can be frustrating! There are many different ways to search them. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, ASK! DO NOT GIVE UP!
Finding Information: Prowling the Web
A lot of information is on the web, which makes it very confusing very fast! Also, no one monitors the quality of the information on the web - some web pages are accurate, while others are not. The key question to consider is…How do we know a website is trustworthy? For every webpage you visit, consider the following questions: (You will need this for question 4 of your assignment!!)
Anyone can put up a web page – how do you know you can trust the data you find? There is a great deal of useful, reliable information on the Web, but search engines like Google make no distinction between good and bad information. When librarians think about website reliability, we use the following criteria:
Here’s a web site on evaluating information resources from Sonoma State University in California: http://library.sonoma.edu/research/subject/evaluate.html
Search engine: www.google.com - A good search engine, but you’re essentially on your own about evaluating what you find.
In general, web pages posted by the government, or by educational institutions are trustworthy. Their web pages have a ".gov" or ".edu" in the web addresss.
**When no printer is available, try saving the web page to a disk. Also be sure to write down the web page's complete web address, because a saved web page may not give you the complete address.
Where librarians start Web research:
http://www.ipl.org- Internet Public Library
http://www.digital-librarian.com -- Digital Librarian: a librarian's choice of the best of the Web
http://www.lii.org- Librarians' Internet Index : websites you can trust
http://www.refdesk.com- Ref Desk.com: The single best source for facts
THREE "GATEWAY" WEBSITES WE SUGGEST TRYING IN YOUR SEARCH FOR INFORMATION ABOUT SMOKING: (These websites can be searched, or will lead you to other helpful websites.)
An excellent source of free-access WWW information for your psychology research is through APA , the American Psychological Association.
Consider a local link established and maintained by another higher education institution. Look at the Psychology Pages from the University in Rhode Island.
http://www.dialogical.net/psychology/index.html The “Psychology World Wide Web Virtual Library,” which is part of the World Wide Web Virtual Library. A comprehensive listing of research leads on topics in psychology.