To be information literate, one must have not only a basic knowledge of some sources of information, but also a knowledge of how to use some of these sources. This section of the Information Literacy modules will focus on how to use some of the information sources discussed in module 1, such as journals, books, and the various indexes which index these sources.
Before you begin to decide what information source to use, it is very important to define your objective, or the question you want to answer with your research. If you are writing a paper, this will be the topic of your paper. Try writing your initial question or topic in one or two brief sentences. Once you have an initial statement of your topic, you may need to refine it a bit.
Students often find that the topic they have chosen for their paper is too broad; there's simply too much information to be handled in a single paper, and they must provide more focus in order to cover the subject in a single paper. For example, you might have an interest in women's history, and decide to write a paper in that area. You could do some general reading in women's history to help you get a feel for the subject, and give you some ideas of what area's of women's history you could find information on, but before serious research can begin, you will have to choose some aspect of women's history on which to focus. Do you really want to research all women, everywhere, throughout history (as the broad topic women's history implies), or would you prefer to research women in a particular location at a particular time, such as women in the 19th century United States. One should probably be even more specific, such as immigrant women in the 19th century U.S., perhaps even Russian immigrant women in the 19th century U.S. How about women in a particular profession? Again, you would want to specify a time and place. Perhaps there is a particular woman you would like to learn more about. These are examples of topics in women's history that might be reasonably handled in the average research paper.
Note that defining the question is not always a neat process. You may have to revise your question as you do your research. If not much has been written about your topic, you may need to broaden your question a bit. More commonly, if much has been written on your topic, you may need to narrow it further. You might find that there is a wealth of research immigrant women in the 19th century U.S., and need to focus further on a particular region of the U.S., or immigrant women from a particular country, or some other aspect of women's history. As you get into your research and do some reading on your topic, you will be able to make the necessary adjustments as you go along.
Once you have refined your topic as best you can, you are ready to identify the information sources for your research. Obviously there's a wide range of sources available. How do you know where to start? There are several platforms in which information is found:
All but the last two platforms listed can be found in the University Library. The focus of our discussion will be these library sources.
To make information easier to find, various databases or indexes have been created to tell you exactly which books, journals, etc., have information on a particular topic. Generally, though, not all platforms are covered in the same index. For example, the library's online catalog is an index for books. Journals, however, are not indexed here. To find journal articles, use a printed index such as the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, or a computer index such as Expanded Academic Index. Newspapers are generally found in separate indexes. The University Library has printed indexes for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Selecting the best database or index for your topic is an important step in any research. Each computer database and print index is unique in its subject coverage and scope, although there may be some overlap between them. Here are some points to consider when deciding whether or not to use a particular index:
The Internet and the WWW are also found in the library, but it's a little harder to describe what type of information you can expect to find there. Sometimes experts can be found through listserves (or online discussion groups) devoted to particular topics; however, non-experts are not always welcome on these listserves. Organizations may have home pages on the WWW. Journals are beginning to be published on the web, but not widely enough to make the web a practical source of journal articles. Also, you would have to know exactly what journal you needed as journal indexes are not generally found on the web, except at sites which charge for access. The Web can be a good source of newspaper articles if you know which newspaper you want, and you only want very current articles. Backfiles are not always available on the web. Of course, individuals or organizations may have web pages with essays on various topics, and these can be good sources of information. Various search engines are available for the web which help you search for web pages on particular topics.
The library's online catalog and journal indexes also have search engines. To search the web or the library's computer databases effectively, one needs to know something about how these search engines work. There are some principles of searching common to most search engines, and our discussion will now turn to this topic.
Before beginning your search, you should find out whether or not the database you have chosen employs a controlled vocabulary, or if it is intended to be searched by keywords. An index usually lists publications by subject. A controlled vocabulary refers to the words used for the subject headings under which the publications are listed, or indexed. Natural language, or the way we talk to each other in ordinary conversation, is not very precise. Words can have multiple meanings, and more than one word can be used to mean the same thing. For example, do we talk about the death penalty, or capital punishment? Probably all of us have used both phrases at one time or another. If an index were to use both phrases as subject headings, you would have to look in two places in order to find all publications on that topic. A controlled vocabulary is used to prevent that inconvenience.
The people who create the index, the indexers, choose one term, and use that term consistently when assigning a subject heading to a publication. In order to remember what terms to use, indexers create a list of approved subject headings. Such a list is called a thesaurus. If a thesaurus is available for the index you have chosen, you will get better search results if you use the subject headings listed in the thesaurus. The library's online catalog uses a thesaurus called the Library of Congress List of Subject Headings (LCSH). If you want to search for books by subject in the online catalog, you should check the LCSH first in order to determine the subject heading to type into the computer. Going back to the example in the previous paragraph, I find that the Library of Congress subject heading is capital punishment, so that is the term I would search in the library's online catalog.
In order to do a subject search, you not only need to choose a subject heading from the thesaurus, you also need to restrict your search to the subject field, or the part of the database where the subject headings for each publication appear. Recently I searched a computer index for the term "mad cow disease." I had in mind the cattle disease that was frequently in the news this summer. Among the articles I found was an article from a music magazine about a rock band who called themselves "Mad Cow Disease." This publication used the words I had asked the computer to search, but was not at all what I wanted my search to find. Restricting my search to the subject field would have eliminated that article from the set of articles the computer found for me.
In contrast to a subject search, a keyword search can use any word(s) and is not restricted to the subject field. A keyword search allows the word(s) to appear anywhere in the record, such as the title, the author's name, the abstract, the subject headings, etc. Because a keyword search is less restrictive, it usually finds a greater number of publications, but the publications may not be as useful. The mad cow disease example above is a good illustration of this. If you are doing a keyword search, keep in the mind the imprecision of natural language. If there are synonyms for your keywords, you will need to search all the synonyms in order to find all the entries in the database where your topic is mentioned. You may also need to search for both singular and plural forms of the word.
A properly narrowed topic will generally include two or more keywords or subject headings, all of which will need to be combined into one search. Keep in mind that a computer will search quite literally for what you ask it to search, nothing less, nothing more. Say I have chosen to research the effect of poverty on the well-being of children. If I type into the computer my whole topic, "the effect of poverty on the well-being of children," the computer will search for each and every word in that statement. I would not retrieve an article titled, say, "How poverty harms children," even though such an article is clearly about my topic. What I need to search instead are only those words which are central to my topic, or the key words. The key words in the above topic are "poverty" and "children." If I type both words into the computer right next to each other, "poverty children," I probably still will not find anything because it is not likely that those two words would ever be used with no other words in between. What to do? Computer indexes use boolean operators to solve this very problem. Boolean operators tell the computer how you want the terms to be related to one another.
The two most important boolean operators are the words AND and OR. Let's see how these two operators work. First, the AND operator. To illustrate how the AND operator works, let's say I want to buy a new car. I have decided that I want the car to be a Saturn. After looking at a few Saturns, I decide that I like the red color best. So I want my car to be a Saturn AND I want it to be red. After looking at the various model Saturns from all angles, I decide that I like the coupe model best. So I want my car to be a Saturn AND red AND a coupe. Notice that each time I add another AND, another requirement follows, thus the number of cars that meet all the requirements gets smaller and smaller. This principle can be illustrated visually as follows:
In the same way, use of the AND operator in a computer index narrows the results of a search by requiring all search terms connected with the AND operator to be present in the same citation. Going back to the previous topic, "the effect of poverty on the well-being of children," and the key words "poverty" and "children," a citation would need to have both key words present in order to be relevant to the topic. Connecting these key words with the AND operator, we would enter the following computer search statement:
poverty AND children
The OR operator works quite the opposite from the AND operator. While the AND operator restricts your search, the OR operator opens it up. Using the car-buying analogy again, let's say you want to buy a new car. You decide you want to buy a new car OR a small truck. After seeing the prices at the first dealer, you decide you want a new car OR a small truck ORa slightly used car. Each time we add another OR to this statement, the number of vehicles you could buy that would meet these requirements gets larger and larger.
The OR operator specifies that you want to retrieve citations that include at least one of any of the terms. For example, you want to find an article about microcomputers. You know these are often referred to as personal computers. To retrieve citations to articles containing either term, combine them with the OR operator as follows:
microcomputers OR personal computers
A good way to remember the roles of the AND and OR operators is the phrase "OR gives you mORe." When deciding which operator to use, ask yourself if your key words are for different concepts, or are your key words alternate ways of saying the same thing. If your keywords are for two or more key concepts, use the AND operator. If your key words are alternate ways of saying the same thing, use the OR operator.
Once you have executed your search, you may need to revise your search strategy, depending on the number of records retrieved. If you have too many, you will need to narrow your search. This can be done using the AND operator to incorporate an additional aspect of the topic. Also, look at the terms you have searched. Perhaps the search terms themselves are too broad. Are there narrower terms you could use instead? Sometimes a search will result in few or no records retrieved, in which case you will need to broaden your search. Again, the can be done either by searching new and broader terms, or incorporating synonyms into your search with the OR operator.
When searching computer databases, keep in mind that the more exhaustive or general your search strategy, the higher the number of records retrieved, including the number of irrelevant records. If you want to increase the relevancy of the records retrieved, you will have to sacrifice the exhaustiveness of your search to some degree. The goal is to balance these two aspects of your search, achieving a high percentage of relevant citations in the records retrieved without eliminating too many of the relevant records that might have been retrieved with a more exhaustive search strategy. Sometimes brainstorming with another person can help. Your professor may be able to suggest other terms that might be used in the literature to refer to your topic. Remember that the librarians at the reference desk can help you revise your search strategies as well.
While the formal search techniques we have described so far are by no means to be neglected in the information search, anyone who has done much research can probably tell you a story of at least one time when they just happened across the perfect source. Perhaps they met someone at a friend's party who was an expert in the area they were researching, or maybe they heard something on radio or television at just the right time. Serendipity can happen in the library too, and there are some tricks of the trade that you can use to help increase the chance that serendipity will happen to you. When you find a good book or journal article through your index searches, look at the subject field to see what subject headings were assigned to the document. There may be a subject heading other than the one you had thought of, and searching the new heading can yield further citations. When you find a promising book in the online catalog, and go to the library shelves to look for it, keep in mind that the call numbers the library uses to keep the books in order on the shelf reflect to some degree the subject matter of the book. Therefore, the books shelved next to the one you found in the online catalog are likely to be on the same or a similar topic. Look at these to see if they may be useful to you as well.
Bibliographies in books or journal articles are another good way to find additional material. If you have found a particular document to be a good source, it is quite possible that the sources that document used will also be useful to you. Citation indexing, mentioned in Module I, is a way of doing the same kind of search, but going forward in time.
So far the search strategies discussed are intended to get you a list of citations to books or articles on your topic. But you can't write a paper from a list of citations, can you? The final step is to actually find the books or articles to which the citations refer. Let's talk about books first.
If you found the book citation in the library's online catalog, the citation should include a location and a call number. The location might say something like Reference or Heritage if the book is one of the special collections in the library. If the location says Main, then it is in the open stacks on the 1st and 3rd floors of the library. Maps located on the computer tables in reference show you where different call numbers and collections are located. If you found the book citation somewhere other than the online catalog, you probably don't have a call number and may not even know if our library owns that book. In this case you need to first check the online catalog to see if the library owns the book and to get the call number.
Citations found in a journal index can never be assumed to be in the library. Once you have a list of citations that look useful, you will need to look up the journal titles included in your citations to see which titles the library owns. You can look these up either in the printed lists of journal holdings scattered around the reference area or in the periodicals office, or you can do a title search in the library's online catalog. If you find the journal title in one of these locations, you know that the library owns the title. Now check the date and issue number that you are looking for to be sure that the library owns the particular issue of the title you need. Once you have determined that the library owns the title you need, go to the 3rd floor where periodicals are shelved. Bound journals are located in the open stacks at the top of the staircase and shelved in alphabetical order by the title of the journal. Generally, if the issue you need is a year old or more, it will be in the bound stacks. There are a few titles, such as newspapers, which the library keeps in microform instead of binding and these titles you need to ask for at the periodicals desk on the 3rd floor. Also, the most recent issues of most titles are kept behind the periodicals desk, so a general rule of thumb is to ask for any issues within the last year at the periodicals desk. This is also the place to ask for anything the library is supposed to have, but you can't find. They're good at locating missing issues.
Audio-visual materials are located in the media services department of the library, but these materials are not in the online catalog. You just have to go down and ask to find out what they have.
That covers materials which you can find in the University library. But what if you have citations that sound just perfect for your research, and the University library doesn't have the title? There are still some options. One option is interlibrary loan. Almost all libraries in the United States, and some outside the United States, participate in some type of interlibrary loan arrangement. That means that if the University library doesn't own the title you need themselves, they can almost always borrow it for you from another library. Keep in mind, though, that most interlibrary loans are sent through the mail, so you do have to allow up to 2 weeks for the title to actually arrive. Books can generally be borrowed free of charge. Journal articles, however, cost $7-10 each due to the fact that the libraries send photocopies of the article rather than the actual journal itself. The University library does have a special arrangement with Loma Linda University's Del E. Webb Library to order journal articles at a lower cost and with quicker delivery. Since the Webb Library is a medical library, this service is most useful when the topic you are researching is in the area of medicine or a supporting discipline such as biology, chemistry, or psychology.
In addition to the interlibrary loan service, the University library can help you find out which libraries do own the title you need so you can see if any libraries within driving distance have the needed materials. On the library's web page (http://www.lasierra.edu/library), you can access the online catalogs of other libraries. The University of California at Riverside, California State University at San Bernardino, and California Polytechnic at Pomona are among the libraries whose holdings can be searched on the Melvyl system. Connections to Melvyl, the Riverside Public Library, and the University of Redlands are all found on the LSU library web page.
Finally, keep in mind that at any stage of the research process, the librarians are here to help you. A librarian is on duty at the reference desk whenever the library is open, except for the lunch and dinner hours. From choosing an index, through narrowing your topic, to locating the results of your search, librarians can help. The librarian on duty is paid to help you, so don't feel shy about asking for whatever help if you need.
1. A properly defined and narrowed topic is essential to successful research.
2. Indexes, whether print or online, should be appropriately matched to the topic.
3. When searching online indexes, connect keywords with the boolean operators AND or OR. Remember, OR gives you mORe.
4. When available, search subject headings from a thesaurus rather than keywords.
5. Use the library web page to help you locate materials in other area libraries.