Posts tagged wr121

We spend a lot of time talking about how to find articles and journals in the library, but that doesn't mean we're not a great place to find books!

Here's how.

From the library homepage, choose OSU Library Catalog from the Quicklinks:

This brings you to the OSU Library catalog, a big database of all of the stuff we own (digital and in print) at OSU Libraries.  The best and broadest place to start searching is with a simple (2-3 terms max) keyword search.

Here's a screenshot of the results screen.  The call number system we use to organize the books in the Valley Library organizes the books by subject.  Look to see if you can identify where the call numbers cluster - where there are several books in the same area.  If you are in the library, you might find it easier to just go to the place where that call number is found, and browse through the books themselves.

(Click the image to enlarge)

In the example above, there is a cluster of books in the PR4037-8 area.

If you are not in the library, you can still take advantage of the call number system.  When you see a book with a potentially useful-sounding title, click the title to bring up more information about the book.  At the bottom center of the page that comes up, you'll see the Call Number is a hyperlink.

Click that link to virtually browse the shelf around the book.

You can find more useful information from the book record.  The Location will tell you if the book is at the Corvallis campus, the Bend campus or the Newport campus, or found online:

1. Anything with "Valley" (Valley, Valley Docs, Valley Special Collections, etc. = the Corvallis campus
2. COCC Second Floor = Bend campus
3. Guin/HMSC = Newport campus

The Status will tell you if the book is checked out, available or on hold for someone else.

To find more books similar to a good one, when you find a good one, look at the Subjects (the green shaded area below).

To get your hands on the actual book, once you know you want it -

If you are in Corvallis - use this list of call number locations to find out where the call number is shelved (the first letter of the call number is what you want).

If you are in Bend or Newport and you want a Valley book, use the Request button at the top of the screen to have the book sent to your library.  (Obviously, if you are in Corvallis and you want a Bend or Newport book, use the same button).

If you are a distance student or faculty member located more than 30 miles from Corvallis, use the Request button to have the book delivered to your address.  Choose Extended Campus as your pickup location.

Everyone knows that images can make a paper or presentation more visually appealing and more effective.  But images, just like other types of sources, should be used ethically, with respect to the person who created them.

This is especially important when you are giving presentations that might end up on video, or posted to the web.  Luckily, it is easy to find images you can use with no worries.

Creative Commons is a project that allows authors, photographers, artists, musicians -- any kind of content creators -- to put a license on their work that tells everyone else exactly how they can use it.

Here's an explanation of all of the different licenses that are available.

Here's how you can use the online photo-sharing site Flickr to search for images with Creative Commons licenses that give you permission to do exactly what you need to do with that image.

Go to the advanced search page at Flickr:

Enter some keywords to find the image you want.  Be creative!  People tag these photos with all kinds of terms - names, colors, cameras, photographic techniques, locations, time periods, and more.

At the bottom of the page, you will see an section labeled Creative Commons.

Checking the box marked Only Search within Creative Commons-licensed content will make sure that all of the photos you find have licenses that say you can use them.  Most of the time, they will ask that you will simply provide attributution (provide a link/ citation crediting the photographer).

Checking the box marked Find content to modify means that you can not only use, but also change (photoshopping, cropping, adding text or captions, etc.) the photos you find.  Check this box if you plan to change the image in any way.

Here's an example of a photo with a Creative Commons license.

[Photo credit:  Oregon State Football Game, Upset #1 USC. Ryan Harvey]

The license is highlighted on the image above with a pink star.  Clicking that link will tell you everything you need to know about what you have permission to do with the image:

Good luck!

So you are searching in an article database, and you find the abstract for an article you want, but the full article is nowhere to be found?  Don't get frustrated!  If the OSU Libraries have the article anywhere, you can frequently find it with just a couple of clicks.

Here's a sample set of search results from Academic Search Premier.  I'm using this as an example, but the basic set of tips here will work in all kinds of article databases, not just EBSCOhost databases.

The third result on that list (marked with a green arrow in the image above) has the full-text available.  For any article with a link that says Full Text, or PDF Full Text, or just PDF, or HTML Full Text (or similar) - you're done.

The other two results, though (marked with pink arrows) don't have that full-text link.  For these articles, you want to click the link marked with the little green circle - 360 Link to Full Text.  This link lets you search for the article in the library's other databases and online subscriptions.

Here's what you will see if you click on the 360 Link to Full Text button for the first article in the example search above:

You are now looking at the page for that article in a different database.  The pink arrow is pointing at the full-text link (just labeled PDF in this database).

After you click the 360 Link to Full Text link, the next screen will not always look the same, depending on where it finds your article.  For example, here's another example.

This article is in the ScienceDirect database, and the full text link is in a tab at the top of the article page.

Unfortunately, the button's not magic, and it can only find articles that the library has access to.  If we do not have a digital subscription to the source you're looking for, you'll see a page that looks like this.  At this point, you can click the link provided to seach the OSU Library Catalog to see if we have a print (hard copy) subscription:

If we do not have the article you want, we can get it for you from another library.  We will always do everything we can to get OSU students, staff and faculty anything they need to be successful in their classes and research at OSU.