The VT Libraries for History Grad Students

Bruce Pencek<bpencek@vt,edu>

x 1-2140 (Newman Library 3033)x 1-5806 (Major Williams 105)

4 Sept 2003

What do you (want to) know?

• What sort of library instruction have you had previously, anywhere? What did it cover?

• What do you remember about it that “worked” for you in using the library (any library) and its tools? What didn’t work for you?

• What kind of information do you think you’ll need to know most about while a grad student here?

• What techniques or tips would you like to learn about?

Start at the library homepage <www.lib.vt.edu>

• Black bars on every page connect to Addison (online catalog) Questions/forms: hold/recall, storage/courier, stack search Hours: Newman, branches Online reference: LiveRef (chat), AskUs (email)

• All library pages color-coded Online resources: indexes, databases, e-journal access Subject pages: research gateways Services Research skills and instruction

Subject pages: your research gateways

8 broadly thematic groups, if you’re feeling your way into a subject

A-Z list behind the green meatball if you know the key discipline <www.lib.vt.edu/subjects/atoz.htm> Which ones might be your points of departure?

Subject librarian contact information for each page

Online resources

– “Article searching” lists our $ubscription electronic indexes and full-text databases.

– Electronic journals database finds what journals we have access to, through what provider, for what dates – and links to them.

– Reference links include citation guides and abbreviation decoders.

– Newspapers available at VT (most in microform)– Electronic theses and dissertations for VT and many

other institutions.

Services

Circulation/reserve: borrowing privileges, nonbook media, storage/courier …

ILLiad – create an interlibrary loan profile and exploit the service

Set up your off-campus access to library subscriptions (Proxy server good. “MyVT” bad.)

Floorplans: the architects screwed us. Maps and guides are near the doors, elevators, and stairs.

And especially: ask for help at the first or fourth (bridge) reference desks

Research skills resources help you teach and learn

• Use the services for faculty/GTAs gateway• Handouts include cheat sheets for electronic

resources, finding aids for microform collections and print reference works

• Tutorials and tips for conducting effective, efficient research• Text: Seven steps • Freshman level: TILT• Library school in a box: Information Skills

Modules

Avoid information constipation

• The most important part of research, using any medium: think it through first (research design!)

• Make hunches based on what you already know (theory and hypothesis formation…)

• Use a textbook or reference tool (eg, encyclopedia to get just enough background to begin thinking).

• Talk out background and hunches to discover what parts fit together and why.

Think about …

… where and why to start looking for information relevant to your (hypo)thesis

Ask yourself:oWhat kinds of information do I need?o If I were information about X, where would I

be?

Talk to the tools by asking…

• What terms describe the information I want? • Start with terms for key concepts. Include

Synonyms (including historical usages)Broader/narrower terms (and note their relation to

your concepts)Variant, obsolete, and foreign spellings

• How do your concepts relate to one another?• Does your tool have a feature to combine terms

after your searches, or must you think out Boolean combinations?

F’rinstance…Concept

Categories 1. Primary concept

AND / prox-imity*

2. Secondary concept

AND / prox-imity*

3. Additional concept

AND / prox-imity*

4. Additional concept

Keywords

[OR] Synonyms/ equivalent terms

[OR] Alternate spellings

[OR] Related terms (esp. broader/ narrower, descriptors/ subject headings, etc.)

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*Though it is an option in JSTOR (where it is called “near”) and the LexisNexis full-text databases (several “w/ ” choices), most databases do not offer proximity/adjacency searching.

Explore key indexes and databases

• America: History and Life (US, Canada) and Historical Abstracts (world since late Medieval): indexes with links-out to e-journals– Use same interface; relatively clumsy

• International Medieval Bibliography: interdisciplinary• JSTOR: fulltext of major journals in many fields, from first

issue to 3-5 years before present• WorldCat: the closest thing there is to a global library

catalog: explore the universe of writing on a topic; authoritative subject headings; what libraries own a book/journal/other item.– Part of FirstSearch family of databases

Examine the index/database

• What kinds of documents does it handle?• What information does it provide about a

document?• What features does it offer to help you assess a

document’s relevance to you?• How does it connect you to the document?• Scope of coverage (dates, but also contents –

sometimes “full text” isn’t so full) • Relation to other finding aids, including printed

tools

Web vs subscription databases

• Quality control of sources and indexing (professional norms; market-enforced quality of subscriptions vs self-publishing model of WWW)

• Coverage: as much as 80% of WWW content technically invisible -- and no search engine captures more than 40% of the visible pages

• Search engines vs subject directories/gateways/portals (eg, VT subject pages, UCR Infomine, UCSB Voice of the Shuttle, Wisconsin Internet Scout)

Search models: TV Guide or

• Tradeoff between precision (relevance to your need) and recall (comprehen-siveness, including irrelevancies)

• Structured data resources (e.g., indexes, library catalogs) emphasize precision through fields – You have to decide up front what might be relevant and search

accordingly (cf. “GIGO” principle)– “controlled vocabulary”: subject headngs, descriptors, thesauri

… channel surfing?• Unstructured data resources (eg, full-text datbases like

LexisNexis, InfoTrac; web search engines) look for word frequency and location. – Power tool: proximity searching (search words near one another)– Problem: literalness/pattern matching of terms handled differently

in different tools (eg, “Nez Perce” vs “Nez Percé”) • Metadata make Web look more structured, but it depends

on producer adding it in standardized forms.– See what “Open Archives Initiative” metadata standard makes

possible at www.oaister.org (View source code of retrieved document to see metadata,)

– Solid tips for creators of digital documents: “Digital Best Practices” <digitalwa.statelib.wa.gov/newsite/best.htm>

• “Findable” WWW documents conform to W3C HTML (etc) standards that distinguish appearance from structure.

Your key library contacts

• Bruce Pencek <bpencek@vt.edu>: social sciences librarian

• Jennifer Gunter <jgunter@vt.edu>: special collections coordinator

And a cast of … dozens