RESEARCH: HELP

'Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.'-Friedrich Nietzsche

Time to Get Oriented!

"Lets not confuse our tools with our goals....."

      - Smartypants McGhee - Opening Quotes from the Soul, 1984. 

	The Evergreen State College Library Catalog The catalog page for the Evergreen State College Library allows patrons and students to search through its collection of Books, Periodicals (on-line and print), Government Documents and audio/video media. This gives the user research access to nearly a million works ranging through mediums, genres and time periods. When used to its full capability it can be an extremely powerful research tool, however it can also send the unknowing user into the depths of research hell, or what we like to call quitting time. Note: This Library Catalog allows unlimited access to all materials to public patrons and students alike, however if you are using it off-campus access to the online databases is restricted to students and faculty you have an "A Number" assigned to them by the Registration and Records Office.
	ProQuest Direct The TESC Library Catalog offers a description of ProQuest as "a combination of an interdisciplinary, a business, a medical, and two newspaper databases. This indexes around 4000 journals, with full-text for half of them. Both indexing and full-text can begin as early as 1986, but most begin in the early nineties." And UMI the folks behind ProQuest offer, "The ProQuest® online information service provides access to thousands of current periodicals and newspapers, many updated daily and containing full-text articles from 1986. Our deep backfiles of archival material are also expanding daily as we digitize 5.5 billion pages from our distinguished microfilm collection." Personally, I would say that for orientation purposes Proquest offers a basic, user friendly and comprehensive interface that does a good job to acclimate the "wet behind the ears" researcher to the wonderful world of internet based research.
	Ebscohost or (Academic Search Elite) The TESC Library Catalog states that Ebscohost offers "full-text for over 2000 journals, with coverage for many beginning in 1990. Indexing & abstracting is available for over 3300 journals, with coverage beginning for many in 1984. Coverage includes over 2500 peer-reviewed journals." And that it covers subjects ranging from "biological sciences, economics, communications [and] computer sciences" to "engineering, language & linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences & women's studies." A comprehensive and slightly more complicated tool than Proquest, Ebscohost offers several different strategies to on-line research that can hinder as well as equip the avid investigator with easily used and easily confused tool for their inquiries. The Folks who designed and built the Ebsco search engine devised this little tutorial that I have found to be extremely helpful. If you run into trouble or lose your way, then check it out, chances are it will offer the guiding light your hoping for. Just go to the main Ebscohost search page and find the "Help" link, it is slightly hard to find so check here if you cant find it.

Secondly, How do we use them...

All three of these resources offer basic and advanced searching, there are times when you may want to utilize the basic functions, but I can tell you from experience that you may wind up with more materials than you are likely to read. Using the advanced searching option can really help in reducing those hits, so keep your eye out, if there are limiters, use them. You may just thank your stars, because facing the challenge of sifting through 8,000 articles really stinks compared to the 150 or so relevant items you will get by narrowing your search.

What's that you say? Limiters?

- Ah, yes. Limiters, are a selected set of standardization's that allow you to reduce your search hits by selecting one or more of these options. Here is a brief overview of what to keep your eye out for.

TESC Library Catalog
	You can find this little button at the top of the results page after you begin your search. It will take you to a new page where you can set your limiters and then return to your active search. These will apply to the search you were conducting just before you clicked the button, and hopefully reduce the amount of hits you initially received.
	When you select the "Limit This Search" button, you'll be taken to a page where you will have a choice to select your limiters. As you can see the choices are extensive and once you get through the drop-down menu's you'll have a very nice, clear query to input into the search engine.
	This option is found on the "Limit This Search" page, and is a limiter that allows you to request that your search be limited to Monographs (Books), Serials, (Periodicals), by collection title, or subunit.
	This option allows you to limit your search by medium, or media type. You can limit to things like printed items, archived items, digital maps, printed maps, digital music, printed music, spoken record, sound record, film and video, and electronic books. If you know what type of material you want, you can use this feature to specify that.
	This option will allow you to search specific collection locations. You will only receive hits that exist in these locations, but that does not mean you have to go there to get them, but more on that here.
	While looking at the "Limit This Search" page you'll see this button. Once you have entered in your search criteria hit this button to restart your original query with the new limiters set.

Proquest and Ebscohost
or	Within both the ProQuest and Ebscohost main search page, you'll find these two tabs. Under each you will find a few important limiters that will help to narrow your search. Proquest refer's to the options as "More Search Options," while Ebscohost maintains the traditional "Limit your results:."
or	Under the above shown tabs, you should see these group of options, only the most important are discussed in this list, but I encourage you to go to these sites and review the limiter sections carefully, there may be an option that's suits your search specifically. As you will see the, both sites offer extensive limiter options that allow you to select only results that will return only results fitting into your specifications. Both databases will allow you to search within a particular journal title, as well as publication date and type. For a more direct explanation click the links below. Proquest Explanation Ebscohost Explanation
or	These options allow you to specify that you only want results that contain the full text of the article. this helps if you don't have allot of time and cant wait for Interlibrary Loan or other consortiums to send you a copy. On the same coin however, this can block out good resources that come only in abstract form, so choose this option wisely.
or	The Peer Review only option is probably the most important tool used by scholarly researchers using on-line databases. They specify to the search engine that you only want credible, scholarly works returned. For a more detailed explanation of Peer Review please check our glossary page here.

 

Okay, So I've set my limiters and entered my keyword, now just what exactly does all this mean?

- I thought you would ask, so here we go. Many of the random links, and strange numbers are a good thing, they tell you how many hits you received and from what LC (Library of Congress) subject heading they fall under. Review my search below and I will try to show exactly what all that mumbo jumbo means, and how you can make it work for you. Ill use a general keyword like "water," so you can see how the keyword is utilized by the various engines in your searching

TESC Library Catalog
	After typing "water" as my keyword a new page which we like to call the "results page" popped up. This page gives us a list of all the items that the search engine found that relate to our keyword. From here you have several options which will eventually get the material in your hands but first we have to find out if its time to look through the list, or possibly narrow it a bit.
	At the top of the page we see this set of buttons, we're already familiar with the limiter button, but what are the others? Start Over: This button takes you back to the main library catalog so you can begin your search again. Another Search: This button takes you back to the blank keyword search page, so you can revise your keyword and start over. See below. Search Summit: This button allows you to try your keyword in the Summit databases which is the consortium of academic libraries in Oregon and Washington. Check the glossary here, for a better explanation. Extended Display: This button allows you broaden the descriptive information shown on the page. See below.
or	To the top left of the results page, we find a set of numbers which correlate to our keyword. These numbers represent the how many instances of the word "water" were found during the search. This also tells us that we have 12,862 entries that were going to have to sift through. In the lower graphic is the same dialogue, only this time it shows how we can reduce the amount of entries received by simply specifying that were looking for "water in law." By selecting the Another Search button, and entering "water in law" instead of just "water" we were able to reduce the amount of hits down to just over a thousand. A significant decrease, and much friendlier to our weary eyes.
or	Now lets look at the individual results. In the top graphic we see the default link, which will take us to more detailed information about that particular publication. At the right we the numbers "1982" and "1," which tells us when it was published and how many copies are available in the library. Unfortunately we have thousand of these links to review and don't want to waste time clicking on each one to find out what its about, so we can click the Extended Display button and we will get a more information for each hit. Look at the second graphic, which shows the exact same item, only this time its in the extended display version. We can now see a bit more info on its contents, where its located, as well as what type of material it is. This option will help us go smoothly through the list until we find one that is relevant to our research.
Now that we've found one we like, lets look at it.
	When we click on a item link as discussed above, we are taken to the individual item page where information specific to that document is held. Here we can see where its located, if its available, as well as ISBN numbers and other miscellaneous info.
	Uh Oh, now we have a whole new set of buttons. So what do they mean? Request: If an item is checked out, Evergreen Library policy allows you to recall or "request" that item. Because this library allows you to check out certain items for the entire quarter, this option helps to make sure that you can get your hands on it for your project. Save In Book Cart: This button saves the particular record to a temporary place where later you can choose to email or print out all the records you choose. This is good for quick filtering, so you can be left with a page that reflects only the results you have saved. MARC Display: The MARC formats are standards for the representation and communication of bibliographic and related information in machine readable form." The MARC formats contain an explicit set of rules for the structure of fields and the content values within those fields. Return To Browse: This button allows you to return to the results page, where you can choose another item to review. The "Back" button on your browser also does this task.
	Here we see the actual location information for the item. On the right we see that this item is located in the Government Documents collection, and can be found using the given call number. And on the right we see that the item is available and can be checked out. Be sure to check this out on each of your items, as you may end up going to the wrong area of the Library to find your materials.
	This part of the record can be extremely valuble as it will allow you to search for items that fall under the given subject heading, which in my experience enables me to find items that I would have not even thought to use. Also, it allows you to view other materials that were authored by the same people that wrote this one. In some cases this can take you to even more relevant materials, so try it out.

Now that we understand the Evergreen Catalog lets take a look at what information is Given by the ProQuest and Ebscohost foks...

Okay, I get it. I think Im ready to give it a try. But first Ill review the other pages in this site so that I can work on my strategy.

- Good. I hope this all helps, and be sure to ask a librarian if you get too lost and please come back if you have any more questions.