
Durham University Library Geography Postgraduate Research Practice Programme 2003: Library Workshop This workshop is intended to cover methods of identifying relevant books and journal articles. It covers various bibliographic databases and other catalogues as well as our own. It also refers to electronic journals and other electronic resources, including routes to information on the World Wide Web. Objectives After completing this workbook you should be able to • Search the Durham OPAC and COPAC effectively • Connect to, and search in, several databases • Access electronic journals and other full texts and display articles in full • Use Subject gateways • Find other worthwhile resources on the internet Note: if you are following this worksheet from a PC outside the Durham University network, you should begin by opening your web browser and going to the Library's web page at http://www.dur.ac.uk/library/ Services which require your ATHENS account will be accessible to you, but some services are only available from PCs within Durham University. 1. Using the catalogue You will need to be able to use the Durham Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) to find out what books and periodicals we have in our own stock. There are 2 versions of this. There is a text version available on some catalogue terminals within the library, and over the Durham University Network. (To get to this click on Start at the bottom left of a networked PC and follow the route Durham Network -- Library OPAC – telnet.) The Web version is available on other terminals and from the Library’s Web page. The following examples will be based on the Web version, but similar searches can be made on the text (telnet) version, which may be faster. First, go to the Library’s home page (http://www.dur.ac.uk/library/) and click on OPAC in the top left corner. You are presented with 3 boxes. To the right, services… offers options such as checking your own record (to see what books you have out), or looking at the regular listing of new books. In the centre limit to… enables you to limit your search, for examples to periodicals, before you search. To the left, search… is what you need to do a search, though there is also the quick search… box at the top. Basic searching If you are certain of the author and /or title of the book you want then use a title, author, or author and title searches. But as there can be inconsistencies in the list of authors, or we may use a form of name you don’t expect, do try a second search type if you fail the first time. If you are at all uncertain of the title or author of a book, or you want to find out what books we have on a particular subject, the best search is keyword, though it is a blunt instrument. The keyword index includes words from the author (if a corporate body) and the title and also from the subject headings given to the book. Subject searches are more problematic: subject headings for topics are normally those allocated to the books from a list compiled by the American Library of Congress, so may not be what come to mind first. But if you find some useful records via the keyword search you can look to see if there are other relevant books with the same subject headings, or with the same classmark, and widen your subject search by doing a Subject or Classmark search. Subject search can be good for people or places, but for people I suggest you just put in their surname in the first instance in the subject field. Log on to the Networked PC Service with your own username and password. 2 Open Netscape. From the University’s home page click on the button for Library. Click on OPAC. Simple searches: In author search check how many books we have written (or edited) by Ian Simmons In title search check for details of a work entitled A sense of place, a sense of time. More complex searching • Truncation can be used by means of an asterisk. If you put develop* in your keyword search you will find entries with the words developing, development, etc., as well as develop. • Boolean searching using more than one word or term can be employed. If you enter 2 words the Boolean operator and is assumed. You can enter not or or and employ brackets to make a more complex search. • You can Limit your results to reduce the number of hits. Language is one type of Limit. An example to try: Russia (population or demograph*) This produces 17 hits. These can be sorted into date order of publication, most recent first, by selecting reverse year from the box at the bottom of the limit/sort options (this will show system sorted as default), and limited by language: selecting items in English reduces the number of items to 9. If one inspects the records one will find that several have subject headings which could be worth following up that have none of the words we started with. One book in the list, Human fertility in Russia since the nineteenth century, has among its subject headings Fertility, Human – Soviet Union – History. If you click on that you will find other works that might be relevant to the search with similar, if not identical, subject headings. Similarly several books clearly relevant to the theme are classified at 301.32947. If one does a classmark search on that number one finds 16 records, many not on the original list. In this case one would soon realise that one should search for Russia or Soviet Union in conjunction with other terms. With this same search follow up some other subject heading, or another classmark found on items on the original list. 3 Try a subject search on a topic of interest to you and follow up subject headings or classmarks on some records retrieved. Possible topics to try a search on: Forests or forestry in Africa Irrigation in relation to rice-growing Note that classmarks beginning 05 or ending (05) relate to periodicals or items in series kept together and not classified by the subject of the item itself. Making more use of the catalogue records You can mark items in a list of records, and save these. You can then select the View Saved records option and e-mail these records to yourself for further use. If you look at the catalogue record for an individual book you will see records for each copy or item. These item records give Location (e.g. Main Library), and Shelfmark which includes a number and usually 3 letters which are to help you locate the item more precisely on the shelf. In front of the number may be other information such as Pam or + which indicate that the item is in a separate Pamphlet, or Oversize, sequence, etc. You will also see a Loan Type, which will indicate for example that the book can be borrowed for the standard long loan period, or perhaps only for 3 days. The status column will indicate whether the book is currently out on loan or not: if it is the date due will appear – in this case you can usually recall it for your use. The Last checked in column is only really of any use if it has a very recent date which may suggest it is worth looking on the Awaiting shelving shelves on the appropriate floor. 2: Other Libraries’ Catalogues We have online access to the catalogues of many other libraries. Research students can use most other British University Libraries. Apply for a SCONUL Research Extra card in the Library if you want to do this. Thus checking whether Newcastle University, for example, has the books you want could be well worth while. Many major research Libraries now contribute information on their stock to a joint catalogue called COPAC. The British Library is now among the libraries whose catalogues have been included on COPAC and the National Library of Scotland is following. From the Library’s home page select online information services and then OPACs. 4 You can then choose an individual library, or COPAC for example, and search in similar ways to those you would use on our own OPAC. If you select info for COPAC you can get to their full User guide. Note that the subject search in COPAC uses words from titles as well as from Subject fields in the records. If contributing libraries to COPAC submit records for the same book which have even fairly minor differences they may appear as separate COPAC records. If Durham is given as a library which has a particular work you can click on Durham at the bottom of the record and see the current information about the item: its shelfmark and whether or not it is on loan. Try a search on Newcastle University Library’s Catalogue and on COPAC, e.g. Minorities Asia as keywords on both (as keyword in Subject at Newcastle, as words in the title field on COPAC), and/or author: Robertson, word in title Russia on COPAC. 3: Journal articles : General Introduction As a postgraduate student you will need to be able to identify journal articles relevant to your research. We will focus on the use of online databases for this purpose. You can follow the suggested exercises, then try out searches of your own Online databases may be quite different in their coverage and appearance, yet have features in common, such as offering both "simple" or "advanced" searching.
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