WRIT 100-11: LIBRARY RESEARCH

Mackenzie Brooks

Assistant Professor & Digital Humanities Librarian

English Department Liaison

brooksm@wlu.edu // Leyburn M37

October 13, 2015

Get out your library/research anxiety now.

http://goo.gl/IeGT3S

By the end of this session, you will...

1. Understand how a library works.

2. No longer fear information overload.

3. Be able to "search everything."

4. Have sources for your research paper.

By the end of this session, you will...

How the Library Works

How the Library Works

Collections + People

https://www.flickr.com/photos/8601342@N03/4549779936/

Libraries Before the Internet

Libraries After the Internet

Information overload

https://xkcd.com/1227/

Information overload is not new.

Filters change over time.

Filters come in many forms.

Search Everything is:

• a discovery tool/system/service
• something we pay for
• potentially biased
• one of the best of its kind
• still not perfect
• constantly changing

Everything =

• 384,267 e-books
• 94,735 e-journals
• 513,255,675 records
• 975,050 catalog items (mostly print)
• 1.5 billion citations
• 90 content types

Remember

You have to tell Search Everything that you know what you're looking for.

A word on Google Scholar...

Activity #1

Turn your research question into a search strategy by deleting everything but the nouns.

Now add some synonyms.

Activity #2

Use Search Everything to find a print book that is available in the library.

Go forth into the stacks and find that book! While you're there, take a look at the other books on the shelf.

Don't forget that the research process is a process.

 

Using your book's bibliography, find another relevant title from stacks.

Activity #3