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Introduction |
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The Dawson College Library is home to contemporary and historical resources that cover the full range of disciplines taught in the college. These resources are provided in various physical and electronic formats.
All of our library resources can be accessed from http://dolls.dawsoncollege.qc.ca, or select “Library” from the “Quick Links” menu on the Dawson College Homepage: http://www.dawsoncollege.qc.ca.
Read About the Library for information on other library tools and facilities, such as laptops and photocopiers.
For any given assignment, you may have to find a range of different sources. Different types of sources – e.g., encyclopedias, books, scholarly articles, or newspapers – provide different types of information. Encyclopedias contain general overviews of topics, and help quickly identify central issues, important figures, and key dates or events. Search for these in the Library Catalogue or click on REFERENCE in the list of databases. Books contain in-depth perspectives, and are likely to provide a thorough, detailed and historical overview of a subject. Search for these in the Library Catalogue.
Scholarly Articles (i.e., peer-reviewed) are published in academic journals, and contain high-level discussions or research on specific topics of study. Search for these in the Article Databases.
Popular Magazine and Newspaper Articles are written by reporters or columnists, for the general population, and contain information designed to inform and entertain the public. Search for these in the Article Databases (ProQuest, EBSCOhost, JSTOR, etc.).
Web sites can provide a wealth of information, but you have to be critical, and investigate their credibility (authority), accuracy, and currency.
CITING RESOURCES The URLs listed below provide links to websites with instructions for students on how to do bibliographies and footnotes. When using the library databases do not rely on their details for MLA or APA formatting. Do check the official style guides for accuracy.
SEARCHING THE COLLECTION Whether you’re looking for a book in the Library Catalogue, or searching for an article in one of the Article Databases, there are two ways to search for materials: by Keyword or Subject.
A keyword search will retrieve every record that contains the terms you type in the database search
A subject search uses a controlled list of subject terms to find all items on a particular subject. To perform a keyword search, type one or more search terms in the search field(s) provided. Press ‘Enter’ to get your results. Each record in your results list will correspond with a single book or article, and will contain all of the terms you typed. A keyword search can be very effective. However, its effectiveness depends on the relevance of your search terms, how you enter them, and how you choose to combine them.
Before you search, you may want to think about your research topic, and what keywords you could use to find information your topic. Most research topics combine two or more main ideas. For each idea, there may be many keywords you can think of to describe it (i.e., synonyms). Before you search, try to clarify the main ideas of your topic, and think of all the keywords you can use to describe them.
You might try plotting your terms in a table like this:
When you’ve identified your main ideas, and thought of some keywords, you should think about how to enter and combine them in the search fields. A thorough keyword search will use Truncation, Boolean Logic, and, in some cases, useful Limits to control how the database searches. These tools are explained in the following sections.
Truncation To “truncate” means to shorten. A truncation symbol (usually the asterisk, *) lets you search for multiple variations of a word, and thereby increase the likelihood of finding all relevant and available records on your topic. Truncation is useful because a keyword search can only retrieve records that contain the exact form of the word you enter. If you type in the keyword “dream” (letters “d-r-e-a-m”) every record that contains the singular noun/verb “dream” will be returned. However, the search will not recognize records that contain “dreams”, “dreaming”, “dreamer”, or “dreamers”. The truncation symbol allows you to search for all these variants at one time. If you type “dream*” in the search field, the database will find all the records that contain: “dream”, “dreams”, “dreamer”, “dreamers”, “dreaming”. For any keyword you use in a search, think how/where you might truncate it to find the most variants.
The Truncation symbol can vary from one database to another.
Boolean Logic
Boolean Logic is a form of algebra, and it controls the search function of most library catalogues and databases. When you enter search terms, you have to tell the database how to combine them. If you don’t tell it, the database will apply its own logic, and this may not return what you want.
The Boolean Operators “AND”, “OR” and “NOT” are the basic building blocks of any search, and allow you to control how the database combines your terms. If you type more than one keyword and use no Boolean operators, most databases will assume there is an “AND” between them. The following table and diagrams explain how each operator works. The shaded portion of each diagram identifies what records will be returned.
Combining (Nesting) Keywords The above diagram explains that an “OR” should be used between synonymous keywords, and will retrieve all the records that contain either term. When there are several synonyms for one idea, “nesting’” uses parentheses “( )” to group these terms together.
This group of nested terms can then be combined in a search with other single or nested terms.
The following table shows examples of correct and incorrect use of nesting in a search statement. In the correct statement, keyword “a” (pets) is combined with the nested, synonymous keywords “b” (domestic) and “c” (household). The search statement you construct is an algebraic equation - a AND ( b OR c ) - which is then factored out by the database: ( a AND b ) OR ( a AND c ).
In the incorrect statement, there is no nesting, and the database falls back on its own programmed logic. First it combines “a” and “b” (“pets and domestic”), then returns every record containing keyword “c” (household). The following diagram shows the results of both searches.
Subject searching is an alternative to keyword searching (though a thorough search will use both techniques). Each record in a database will contain a short list of subject terms that describe the contents of the book or article. These subjects (also called “headings”, “descriptors”, or “topics”) are assigned, by a librarian, from a controlled list of terms. There are three ways to search for items by subject: 1) Click on a subject link, from inside a book/article record. This will conduct a subject search, and return every other record that contains the term you selected; 2) Type a known subject term into the keyword search field, and click the “Subject” button (Library catalogue) or choose “Subject” from the field drop-down menu (article databases); or. 3) Browse through an alphabetical list of subjects, and click on a term to find all the records. This list of subjects may appear under one of the following menu tabs: Subjects; Topics; Thesaurus; Descriptors; Indexes. A subject search may find fewer results than a keyword search, but these results are usually more precise. This is because a keyword search mechanically matches words (or strings of letters), whereas a subject search intelligently matches ideas.
Subject terms will vary from one database to another, so it’s important that you use terms that are recognized by the database you are searching. In the Library Catalogue, subjects are selected from the Library of Congress Subject Headings list. The article databases (ProQuest, EBSCOhost, etc.) contain their own topic lists.
Dawson’s General and Reference collections are organized following the Library of Congress Classification Scheme. The Library of Congress is used by most college and university libraries, and is designed to ensure that books on the same subject are grouped together on the shelves. In some cases, browsing the shelf can identify books that have not been found by keyword or subject searching.
Each book in the collection has a unique Call Number that is constructed from the Library of Congress Classification scheme.
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