Library Research Guided Exercise, Pt I: Finding books and journal subscriptions -- Answer Key

Note: if you numbers are a little higher than the ones given (say +1-3), that is okay-- it just means books have been added to the collection since this answer key was written.
  1. Use (click on) "Title" to look for the book: New century for natural resources management.
    • What is its call number? __HC21 .N44 1995__
    • Look under Status, is it Available or due back (checked out)? __ 6/15/08 ___
    • Find and click on the button to repeat your search automatically in the Summit catalog.
    • How many libaries have this book according to the Summit catalog? __19__
    • If it available in at least one of this libraries you could request it. Locate (but don't use) the link to "REQUEST THIS ITEM."
    • Find the Summit button to return to OSU's catalog.
  2. Use and look for the 2003 edition of the book: Natural resources ecology, economics and policy.
    • What is its call number? __HC85 .N37 2003___
    • Is it available to be checked out? __ Available ___
      • If so, and if you are an Extended Campus student, you could request it using the button.
      • If so, and if you are a Corvallis student just come into the library.
      • If it is not available at OSU, regardless of your location, you would want to try the get a copy from another library.
    • Find and click on the link to "Catalog Home" in the uppermost right corner.
  3. To look for information on natural resource management in Oregon, first select the "Keyword" search option. Spelling and word variations count -- compare the following approaches and results:
    • Type "natural resource management in Oregon" (including the "" quotation marks) in the search box and click on search. How many results do you get? _0__
    • Now try it without the "" (quotation marks). How many results do you get? _83__?
      • to give you these results, the search has been changed. An "and" has been inserted between each word.
    • Click on and try each of the following search statements, compare the number of results you retrieve. Use quotation marks when they are shown below so that you are searching for phrases. Remember to use to return you to a "Keyword" search
      • "Natural resource management" and Oregon _14__ (singular phrase)
      • "Natural resources management" and Oregon __19__ (plural phrase)
      • "Natural resource" and management and Oregon _38__ (singular and as separate terms)
      • "Natural resources" and management and Oregon _214__ (plural and as separate terms)
  4. Getting more: In an online search, using a "wildcard" or a "truncation" symbol is one way to accommodate variations in spellings, different forms of a word such as plurals, or words with the same "stem." For example, from participat we get the words: participate, participates, participation, or participatory. The OSU Libraries Catalog recognizes "*" (the asterisk) as such a "truncation" symbol for up to five extra characters and "**" for an unlimited number of characters.
    • Click on and try the search statement below:
      • Natural resource* and manag* and Oregon
      • Does this search add to the number of titles retrieved? _269__
  5. So far the titles on your lists have been shown in "relevance" order (according to where and how often the terms are used). To see the titles in date or alphabetical order, before you click on "search" look for and change the "search and sort" criteria to "title" or "reverse date." Or, if you have a list of titles from an earlier search, select the and do the same thing...there is a quick way to do this, can you see it?
    • Click on "Catalog Home" and enter the following search Keyword statement:
      • natural resource* and participat*
      • You are shown the first 12 of how many titles? __165___
      • Use the button to sort this list alphabetically by title
    • Look for the title: Who's in place, who's out of place… at the end of the listing (~164th). Click on the highlighted title to see the full catalog record.
    • Look over the information provided and take note that:
      • This book is an OSU Ph.D. Dissertation, what is its Call Number? __LD4330 2000D .C53__
      • Call Numbers usually place you close to books on a similar subject, in this case it does not.
      • Rather, "LD 4330" is assigned to ALL OSU Masters Theses and Ph.D. Dissertations regardless of subject area. It makes this collection easy to find in the library, but not easy to browse.
      • Theses and dissertations can be a great source for both the information directly and for the references to the literature they provide.
      • Look at the lines following "Subj., lc" these are the Library of Congress Subject Headings assigned to this book. Notice they are web links and can provide a good way to move from one *good* reference to related items within the OSU Libraries Catalog.
      • OSU theses and dissertations completed after 2006 will have a link to the full-text.
    • Find and click on "Catalog Home."
  6. Subject Heading searches in the library catalog are based on the Library of Congress Subject Headings noted above. Though extensive (5 volumes), this is a highly "controlled" set of terms and may seem quite conservative or limited, when compared to the words you would see in chapter headings of a book for instance.
    • Find the LC Subject Search Screen, by clicking on "Subject Heading (L.C.)"
    • To do a new subject heading search, remember you can use the link. When you enter a search, you will be shown a list of subject headings alphabetically. Across from each entry is the number of books cataloged using that heading. To see these titles, click on the heading of interest.
    • Now, try the following search statements:
      • Decision making
      • Decision making -- natural resources
      • Decision making -- oregon
      • Natural resources -- oregon
    • Select a title of interest to you. Note other subject headings in use for that title. Notice also that state and county names usually follow the "subject" term (to narrow the scope).
    • End by clicking on "Catalog Home"
  7. Journals articles: When someone recommends an article in a journal or magazine you will want to know if the library has a specific issue of that journal or magazine. For instance, suppose you need to locate "Agriculture and endangered species: an analysis of trade-offs in the Klamath Basin, Oregon." an article written by R. M. Adams and S. H. Cho, in the October 1998 issue of Water Resources Research.
    • If you don't subscribe to the journal, you'll want to see if the OSU Libraries does. Begin with the library catalog and
      • Select Limit search to: "Journals"
      • Select "Journal Title"
      • Type "Water Resources Research" in the search box and select the first title on the resultant list by clicking on the highlighted title.
      • Locate the call number for Water Resources Research (look for it across from the "Location ... Valley" What is the call number? __GB651 .W35__
      • When did the Valley Library begin getting this journal? __Volume 1, 1965___
      • What issue of the journal is the "Latest Received?" __September 2007 = Volume 43 Number 9__
      • Based on this information do you expect the Library to have the "October 1998" issue? __Yes__
      • In this case (and increasingly for journals in our collection) you can link to an electronic version of this journal.
        • Which years are listed as available online? __"Jan. 01, 1990-" (this means 1990-date)____
        • Follow the link to this online version and see if you can find this article (look for the link to "Library Access: back issues from 1990:". If successful, which pages is this article on? _2741-2749____
        • Use the browser's back arrow to return to the catalog from the journal page.
    • If you are a registered OSU Extended Campus student and you needed a copy of an article that was not available electronically you would use the feature and a copy of the article would be sent to you.
    • Click on "Catalog Home"
  8. You cannot search for journal articles on a topic using a library catalog, but when you want to know which journals/magazines the library subscribes to on a given subject area, one way to begin is to use a Keyword search and add "and periodicals" to a more subject-specific term.
    • From the Catalog Homepage, click on Keyword
    • Type (for example) "natural resources and periodicals" (don't use the quotation marks).
    • Notice that titles, call numbers and dates are shown on the listing.
    • Dates across from a title on this list will indicate the year the library's subscription began not the latest year available -- is probably wise to sort such a list by title.
    • You will notice that many titles are not really journals, rather they are reports that come as irregularly or annual publications.
  9. If you look for journals on a specific topic and get no results in the catalog, remember it is only designed to tell you if there is a *journal* devoted to that topic and not if there are articles about that topic in those journals. For this task we need to use the article/indexing databases discussed in the second guided exercise.
  10. There is a handy link to OSU Libraries' electronic journals (E-Journals) on the library homepage.
    • Use the link to "Library Home" (upper right corner);
    • Then find and click on the link to E-Journals (left side under "browse";
    • Notice that you can search by title, or get a listing by broad subject heading, or just page through this long listing;
    • There is no tool to search for articles within this list of journals as a whole -- for that you will need the second guided exercise.

Go on to Library Research Guided Exercise II: Locating and Searching "Article" Databases.

Return to Main Page NR 455: Natural Resource Decision Making: Week 2 Assignment

Send question/comment to bonnie.avery@oregonstate.edu.