1.1. Why Use Books and Audio-Visual Materials?

Why Use Books and Audio-Visual Materials?.

Books and audio-visual materials (AV) include a variety of types of information resources. AV materials include such information resources as:

videos, cassettes, CDs, slides, and sound recordings

Image of a CD.

Examples of some types of books include:

  • textbooks, novels, and scholarly works on a single topic The turning pages of a book.
  • reference books like almanacs or dictionaries
  • collections of writings, such as essays, short stories, plays.

 

Books are useful for:

·  in-depth, lengthier information about a topic;

·  historical information about some topics;

·  somewhat current information, but always check the publication date because you may decide to use periodical articles for more current information.

Other features of books include:

·  sometimes the chapters contain information about several different subjects, like a collection of essays;

·  most books have an index in the back and a table of contents in the front to help you find your topic;

·  visual information can be found in books, like photographs, maps, and other illustrations. Look for the abbreviation "ill." or "illus." ; in the online catalog record.

 

 



1.2. Common Features of Library Catalogs

Common Features of Library Catalogs

 

Virtually all libraries now have online catalogs to access materials, so learning how to effectively search the CCSF online catalog, CityCat (sometimes just called the opac) will prepare you for searching other library computer catalogs like the San Francisco Public Library's catalog or San Francisco State University's catalog.

An online catalog is

  • a database that contains descriptive and location information primarily about books and non-print materials in a particular library or libraries. It is the access/search tool that allows you to search for books, videos and other materials AND determine the library location and availability of materials.
  • CCSF's catalog, called CityCat provides access to ALL cataloged books, videos, cassettes, films, CDs, DVDs, and other audio-visual materials located in any of the campus libraries, the Media Center and other library/learning resource collections at City College.

What is typically NOT included in library catalogs are articles in magazines and newspapers , as there are separate periodical databases and indexes which lead you to periodical articles.

While online catalogs may look different, they share many common features.

  • Most online catalogs include only bibliographic information (e.g. author, title, publisher, length of book, etc.) in their database.
  • All of this descriptive information is called a record . Each piece of the record, like the title or author, is called a field. Most of the fields, such as title, subject, author can be searched.
  • Increasingly, online catalogs contain links to Web sites within their records or from the search results screens.
  • The growing trend is for library catalogs to include full-text E-books, or electronic books. San Francisco Public Library's catalog has many newer E-books. There are also collections of older electronic books freely available on the Web. Copyright law no longer restricts distribution and they are in the public domain. "The Online Books Page," hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, has a well-organized collection of freely available e-books where you can browse by subject. To browse click here http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/subjects.html

To learn more about some of the common features of bibliographic databases and to look at an example of a typical online catalog record, you will now read three sections from an award-winning online tutorial created by Cal-Poly.

Read the sections:

  • "Overview of Databases"
  • "Structure of Databases"
  • "Bibliographic Databases", which is part of the section "Types of Databases."

Now click on this link to read the 3 sections: "Overview of Databases" (Remember to close this second window when you finish the tutorial.)

(Grateful acknowledgement is made to Kennedy Library, California State University-Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, for permission to include some links to their excellent tutorial.)

 

 

1.3. How Does City College's CityCat Catalog Work?
How Does City College's Catalog Work?

CityCat , CCSF's Library online catalog, provides many search options so you can find a book, video or CD in ANY of the 5 City College campus libraries. It includes options to search by:

  • author's name
  • title
  • subject
  • keyword(s)

Look at the example below to see the various search options.

Image of CCSF's online catalog main screen showing many search options.

 

What if you don't know the complete title of a book? Which search option would you use?

That's right.... the Title Keyword search option. Just type as many words of the title as you know.

Same for the author. You can just type the last name of the author. For example, If you know the author's last name is Hernandez, just type the last name (also called family name or surname). You do not need to know the first name.

But what if you wanted to find books and videos ABOUT a person? For example Cesar Chavez. What type of search would you select from the search choices?

NO...not an author search because that would give you things written BY Cesar Chavez.

YES, you would use one of the Subject search options or the broad Keyword option.

Are you hoping that some of your textbooks are available in the Library? Notice the RESERVES by Course and RESERVES by Instructor. Use one of these options to determine what materials your instructors may have put on Reserve for the class.

Locate on the screen example Other Searches? You'll see that there are other search options, such as:

  • Advanced Search
  • Author/Title search , which is very useful if you only know part of the author's name and part of the title
  • Keywords in Contents and Notes , which allows you to search for a specific song on a CD or in a songbook; a specific play, story or essay in a book of collected essays, plays or stories.

 



1.4. Doing Title Searches
Doing Title Searches

Suppose you want to know if CCSF has the book The Future of Energy Use.
So you would select the Title Begins With option and type the exact title in the search box.

Whenever you are not sure of the exact title, then select the Title Keywords option. Notice the following:
* No need to type "the"
* No need to type capital letters.

Step 1 Let's examine the results of this Title search.
Here is the screen image of the bibliographic record.

      Image of the bibliographic record for the book The future of energy use.

Step 2 There are three things to note:
* notice the Description field. There you see that the book has illustrations (ill.) and maps;

* this book's record includes its "Table of Contents," a very useful feature to give you more information about the book;

* the call number, which is the book's "address" on the shelf.



1.5. Doing Author Searches
Doing Author Searches

 

Doing a search for an author requires that you type the author's last name (family name) BEFORE the first name. But you don't even need to type the first name if you don't know it. Notice below the search for the last name Tan.

 

 

Image of a screen for a search for items by an author with the last name Tan

Step 1 Look at the next screen display of the search results, where you see a list of authors with
the last name of Tan. For the author Amy Tan how many entries (or items) do you see listed?

Image of results screen for a search for items by an author with the last name Tan

Step 2 Clicking on the author's name will take you to a screen that lists all the titles of materials
written by that author.

 

 

        Image of all the titles by Amy Tan

Step 3 Suppose you want to borrow the book The Bonecutter's Daughter. After clicking on the title,
you will see a full display of the bibliographic record and copy/holdings information.

bibliographic record for the book The Bonesetter's Daughter, showing that the Rosenberg and the John Adams campus libraries have a copy.

QUESTIONS: 1. How many copies are actually available and on the shelf at the Rosenberg Library?
2. What Subject could you click on if you want to find more fiction books about female immigrants from China?

1.6. How Do Libraries Organize Material?
How Do Libraries Organize Material?

 

For books, all libraries use a subject classification system to organize materials on the shelves. College libraries use the Library of Congress classification system, which is composed of letters and numbers. This means that no matter what college/university library you use, the system will be the same. You may be more familiar with the system that public libraries use, which are call numbers composed only of numbers.

The subject/topics of a book are represented by a combination of letters and numbers. For example, BF is for psychology. BF 1566 is one of the possible call numbers for books on witchcraft.

The complete call number is like an address so you can find the item you want. Knowing that the call number represents the general subject means that you can find other books on your topic shelved nearby.

Test #1 will have a question about call number shelf order. If you aren't clear about how to read and interpret a call number, click on this link to an excellent tutorial created by the Honolulu Community College Library:

"Using Call Numbers"

 

 

 

 

 

1.7. What is Plagiarism?

What is Plagiarism?

 

Plagiarizing is the use of another person's ideas, images or words without crediting or acknowledging the person. It's like stealing someone's concepts and words.

The next topic in this Lesson includes information about preparing bibliographic citations so that you will know how to avoid plagiarizing.

The primary reason that you need to prepare a "Works Cited" list, "References" list or a "Bibliography of Sources Used" is to acknowledge and give credit to the various sources from which you took your ideas or words that you used in a paper or assignment. Another reason is to allow anyone reading your paper or assignment to find the information sources to which you refer.

To avoid plagiarizing it's important to know when you must cite your sources. Most people know that when they use a quotation from an information source, they must provide a reference or citation to the specific source of information. What are some other situations that require you to cite your sources?

Click on the following link to the UC-Davis tutorial "What is Plagiarism" and read it carefully. http://sja.ucdavis.edu/avoid.htm

You will find a couple of questions in this Lesson's online practice assignment based on the UC-Davis tutorial.

 

 



1.8. What are Bibliographic Citations?

What are Bibliographic Citations?

picture of 5th ed. of MLA Handbook

A "bibliography" is a list of information sources at the end of a research paper, article or book. (Some people confuse bibliography with biography, which is information about a person's life. "Bio" means life and "biblio" means book.)

A bibliographic citation for a book is the basic descriptive information about it, such as the author, title, place of publication, publisher, and date.

It's important to follow established guidelines for writing bibliographic citations so that the reader can find the exact book, article or Web documents you list. In other words, all the pieces of the citation must be included and in a certain order.

As you know for this course the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers is the authority used for determining citation format. The general format for citing a book in MLA format is the following (note the punctuation for each part of the citation):

Author. Title. Place of Publication: Publisher, Date of publication.

If you are writing (as opposed to word-processing) bibliographic citations, you would underline the title, instead of using italics.

Here is the bibliographic citation for the book you will use for this course:

 

The elements of this citation:

 

Author

Gibaldi, Joseph (Author may not always be provided)

Title

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

Edition

6th edition (edtion may not always be provided)

Place

New York

Publisher

MLA

Date

2003

Tips:

  • Don't forget to indent all lines after the first one about 5 or 6 spaces
  • All months except May, June and July are abbreviated: Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.
  • Don't forget the final periods at the end of ALL citations.
  • Note the colon : between the title and subtitle. If the title includes a question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!) at the end, place it within the ending quotation, for example:
        "How Tall is the     Empire State Building?"

You have 3 convenient places to see examples of how to write bibliographic citations for print and online information sources:

1. the print edition of the MLA Handbook is available at all the campus libraries;
2. an online version that you can access from the course homepage " Course Resources" link;
3. this excellent section from the Duke Libraries Web tutorial "Assembling a List of Works Cited in Your Paper". It provides other citation formats (such as the American Psychological Association, APA format) in addition to the MLA format.