Barnard Library: Finding the Best Resources ENGL BC1210: First Year Writing

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1 Barnard Library: Finding the Best Resources ENGL BC1210: First Year Writing Women & Culture Librarian: Charlotte Price Guide based on one by Lois Coleman LeFrak Center STARTING YOUR RESEARCH Online Research Guide: On the library home page, library.barnard.edu, click on Guides and Tutorials - First Year English Guides or click on Research Guide in CourseWorks. You can ask for help using the online chat on the library home page, either at Barnard or Columbia Make an appointment with your Personal Librarian for a one-on-one consultation if you have trouble with your research. FINDING BOOKS Use the Quicksearch on the library home page. Use the dropdown list to select Catalog The Catalog shows the titles of books, videos, sheet music, sound recordings, and journals in the Columbia libraries, but NOT the articles in journals Title searching: Three types of citation in MLA style: A book : Adams, Tracy. Violent Passions: Managing Love in the Old French Verse Romance. Palgrave Macmillan, Notice that the year and publisher are given. A chapter in a book : Spiegel, Harriet. The Male Animal in the Fables of Marie de France. Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, edited by Clare A. Lees, University of Minnesota Press, 1994, pp Notice Ed. (short for editor ), and the publisher. An article in a journal : Burns, Jane E. "Courtly Love: Who Needs It? Recent Feminist Work in the Medieval French Tradition." Signs 27.1 (2001): Notice the volume number and pages, but no publisher is given. All Fields (Keyword) searching: find words in any field in the record (title, subject, contents, author, publisher, etc.): Use quotes for a phrase Use * for truncation (for variant endings): feminis* finds feminism, feminist, feminists

2 Complex Keyword searching using AND and OR: AND finds records which have all the search terms you entered OR finds records which have one or more of the search terms - OR finds MORE Group search terms together with parentheses: e.g. french poetry AND (sex* OR gender) Fun with search results: Sorting Finding online books Limiting to specific locations Library of Congress (LC) Call Numbers : In the LC classification system, the first number is a whole number, e.g. H5 is before H4501, but the number after the point is like a decimal, e.g. H8.A4811 comes before H8.A5. The call number of a book is determined by the first subject heading listed in the record. Some useful call numbers: Ovid s Metamorphoses PA6519.M9 Marie de France PQ1494 To the Lighthouse PR6045.O72 T6 Sor Juana Inès de la Cruz PQ7297.J6 Locations Milstein Call Number Guide Make sure to check a book s location in CLIO before going to get it! The same call numbers can be in different libraries Reference books are across from the circulation desk in Butler. 18,000 Barnard books are temporarily located in Milstein, in Butler Library, in rooms 406, 406A and 409. (The rest are in storage for the next three years.) Milstein (Butler) books on literature (call number P) are in Butler 403. Butler Stacks books on literature (call number P) are on Butler Stacks level 5.

3 Library Search Exercise 1. Take the book you found in Butler, and write down the author s name(s). 2. What do you know about this author (where they work, what they do, other sources they ve created, their relationship to the source content, etc.?) If you can t tell from your source, research the author online. What is the author s relationship to this subject? Is the author a journalist, scholar, independent writer, etc? 3. List the credentials for your author. Is this author trustworthy? Unbiased? 4. Does your book have a bibliography or works cited page? Does it have an index in the back? 5. What would you say about the language used in the source? Is it difficult to understand, or fairly simple? 6. Who do you think is the audience for your source? Why? 7. What about the visuals in your source? For example, are there images used to support the message, provide evidence, or that give you information about the author? Are there images that distract?

4 Database & Article Searching 1. Try these All Fields (keyword) searches in the CLIO catalog and write down the number of results found each time: Keyword search Number of results Marie de France Marie de France Marie de France feminism Marie de France feminis* 2. Look up an article a. Write down your research topic that interests you: b. Choose two or three keywords from your topic. Write down a synonym for each (e.g. plays OR drama, sex OR gender) i. ii. iii. c. On library.barnard.edu, click on Search and select Databases then search for the database on your card. Click on the link next to the word Online in the first record that comes up. d. Use a keyword search to look up scholarly articles on your topic, using some of the keywords you came up with. Try synonyms, and start out general if you re not finding anything! e. Write down two subject headings you find in the database that match your topic: i. ii. f. the full article to yourself (not just citation).

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