Robert Stanton’s Bibliography Class Brendan Rapple 21 May, 2007

What is a Library? Defined narrowly: “A building, room, or set of rooms, containing a collection of books for the use of the public or of some particular portion of it, or of the members of some society or the like; a public institution or establishment, charged with the care of a collection of books, and the duty of rendering the books accessible to those who require to use them” – Oxford English Dictionary

Today Libraries hold much more than just books: –Digital resources, journals, sound and video recordings, newspapers, government documents, DVD’s, etc. Point the user to the world of global information –Not limited to what is physically in the building –Online resources help open up access to the global world. Collections can often be accessed remotely.

BC Libraries Facts Support teaching, learning, and research at Boston College with: Well over 2 million printed volumes Over four hundred research databases that can be accessed in the library or remotely Specialized libraries throughout campus Subject specialists available to assist you.

QuestQuest: BC Libraries’ Online Catalog Use QUEST to locate material owned by BCQUEST Different types of searches: basic, advanced, electronic reserves Limiting searches: by library, format type, language, date, etc. Some Features of Quest: –Requesting books checked out, in process, or on order –Interlibrary Loan –“Your Account”: Renew online View account activity history Request book delivery, article photocopies Request a library session Recommend library material Set up alerts

You’re in a database and found an article you want. How do you get it? Easiest way? Click on Find It. Find It will tell you: –Does BC have the article in full text online? –... Or is it in print in the libraries? –... Or can you get it through interlibrary loan? Look for the Find It Icon

Electronic Texts Some e-texts are typed, some are scanned. OCR (optical character recognition) is often used. Increasingly PDF is used. Sometimes HTML markup language is used.

Google Book Search An initiative to digitize books from a growing number of major libraries (presently fourteen in the US, UK, Spain and Germany). Potential number of books to be digitized is vast. Almost all of the U. of Michigan’s over 7,000,000 volumes will be copied. Only digitized books in public domain will be accessible full-text online. Still, hundreds of thousands of books are already freely available full-text.

Many Other Digitization Projects, e.g.... University of Michigan Digital Library Text Collection -- over 32,000 texts.University of Michigan Digital Library Text Collection Oxford Text Archive -- several thousand electronic texts.Oxford Text Archive Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts -- public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia --produces an on-line archive of thousands of SGML-encoded electronic texts.The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Project Bartleby Archive Project Gutenberg Berkeley’s Gallica – medieval to early 20 th cent ,000 texts, many journal runs, etc.Gallica BC Libraries’ Guide: Electronic BooksElectronic Books

Google Scholar Though not as focused as many subscription databases, Google Scholar has great size, breadth and cross-disciplinary depth. Types of scholarly material Google Scholar points to include –Peer-reviewed papers –Theses –Books –Abstracts and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Searching preferences may be set to BC’s holdings so that the icon will be linked to results. Consult Advanced Scholar Search Tips to increase search accuracy.Advanced Scholar Search Tips

Other Library Gateways for Humanities Research Boston Library Consortium An association of 19 academic and research libraries in New England. Boston Library Consortium National Library Catalogues Worldwide This site lists national library catalogs alphabetically by country.National Library Catalogues Worldwide The European Library A Gateway to Europe's National Libraries.The European Library Libweb Links to 1800 library home pages from libraries in over 70 countries.Libweb The British Library Public Catalogue Library of Congress (LC) Online Catalog Presidential Libraries Canadian Libraries Gateway Provides a centralized window to Canadian libraries of all types and sizes.Canadian Libraries Gateway Boston Theological Institute Libraries HOLLIS The Harvard University Library catalog.HOLLIS

Is Google Used Efficiently and Effectively? How often is Google’s advanced searching capability utilized?advanced searching How many click on Google’s MORE link which provides more focused searching byMORE Catalogs Directory Images Maps Finance News Patents and a host of other options.

Google: Not the Only Search Engine Scores and scores of others, including Ask.com, Scirus, Clusty, SMEALSearch, Live Search, Exalead, and of course Yahoo!.Ask.comScirusClusty SMEALSearchLive SearchExaleadYahoo! Important to remember that –Different search engines search different parts of the web –They do it in different ways –There are also widely divergent methods of ranking results.

Capabilities of Different Search Engines Some are good at –finding still and moving images (e.g. Yahoo!Video for video)Yahoo!Video –searching for different file formats (e.g. Exalead)Exalead –returning thumbnails of pages (e.g. Ask)Ask –visual searches (e.g. Pagebull)Pagebull –finding blogs (e.g. Technorati for blogs)Technorati –retrieving podcasts (e.g. podzinger.com)podzinger.com –limiting searches to a region or geographically (e.g. Ask)Ask –retrieving sounds (e.g. Findsounds) and so on.Findsounds The following web sites provide useful overviews of search engines and their particular specializations: 1) The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, April 2007The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, April ) Finding Information: Search Engines;Finding Information: Search Engines 3) Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher;Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher 4) Search Engine Resources. Search Engine Resources

Selective Web Guides Categorized guides to web sites generally built and maintained by educators. Sites carefully evaluated for accuracy and high quality content. Examples: INFOMINE Intute BUBL LINK Scout Report Archives Librarians' Internet Index (LII)