The Writing Program at BSU

"Befriending the Library": An Exercise

Excerpted from The Curious Researcher: A guide to writing research papers by Bruce Ballenger (3rd Edition)

The Basic Plan of the College Library

Most university libraries are similarly organized. There's a circulation desk where you check out material, pay fines, ask for change for the photocopy machines. One valuable service the circulation desk provides the researcher is determining whether a needed book has been loaned and if so when it's due back. The stacks is another name for a room full of bookshelves, often row upon row of them like a Midwestern cornfield. A few stacks may be closed to students and the library staff will retrieve a book for you, but most are open and you're free to wander about. A reserve desk holds material, often at an instructor's request, for use by students for a few hours at a time. There may also be a room set aside for special collections, or material that is valuable or unique.

But the reference section is the research writer's most important resource. If research is like detective work, then the reference section is the FBI archives. It's rich with helpful leads and information about what you want to know and where you can find it. Knowing just where to look will make an enormous difference in how you feel about the library. It may never be a place where you want to camp out, but once you've mastered the basics of the reference section the library may finally become more familiar territory.

Fortunately, there are people who can help. Most university libraries have staff who are specialists in reference materials, and there's often a separate reference desk where these librarians dwell, surrounded by computer terminals. Most are experts at helping students with their research papers. For years, I was too shy to ask for help or afraid my questions would seem dumb. I now realize how much time I wasted looking in the wrong places and how much useful information I never found because of my reluctance to ask for help. Don't make the same mistake.

The Computer Revolution

Whether you love libraries or loathe them, by now you likely know the basics of how to use one. You know about the general encyclopedias, the Reader's Guide, and the card catalog. You may have even tangled with microfilm, or had experience consulting a computer database. But what you probably don't appreciate yet is that the reference room is an incredibly rich place to mine for information. And it keeps getting better as new reference materials are developed , along with new ways to access that information. The computer revolution has transformed the reference room. In the past two years, for example, my own university library has added ten new computer stations and completely converted the card catalog to a new computer system that not only allows me to call up books by author, subject, and title, but will tell me whether the book I want is available, and if not, when it's due back.

CD-ROM

Compact discs, the technology that revolutionized the music industry, have done exactly the same thing for the library. The CD-ROM (Compact Disc with Read Only Memory) is now a standard fixture in most college libraries. Once you learn how to use them (and it's not hard) to search for books and articles on your topic, you'll be hooked. The typical CD-ROM is a 4.72 inch plastic disc that looks exactly like the latest issue from the Rolling Stones, but in some ways it's even more impressive. That disc can hold over 500 megabytes of information, the equivalent of 250,000 pages of text. CDs are available covering many fields of study, from general science to business, indexing articles and books on virtually any topic.

The CD's run on standard computers, and within minutes can help you do a search that would take hour an hour or more using conventional bound reference sources. For example, imagine searching ten years worth of the Reader's Guide for articles on manic depression. You'd have to go through each year, volume by volume, jotting down promising article citations. The CD-ROM equivalent of the Reader's Guide (the most popular version is called InfoTrac), would do the same thing in about 60 seconds, and if it was linked to a printer, print out the citations you mark. You wouldn't have to pick up a pen.

Because of its size and sophistication, there's a good chance that the your college library is quite a different place than the library you began to master back home.

Before you plunge into researching your paper, get some practice in the reference room, using key sources and discovering new ones. The exercise that follows should help introduce you to some of the basic references and how they can contribute to your paper. At the same time, you'll do some preliminary research on your tentative topic that may help you further narrow your focus. Later, you'll get some practice with more unusual sources you may not know existed, and that can really help you out if you're having a hard time finding information.

Internet Access

You may not even have to travel to campus to search CD-ROM indexes. The academic library, like almost everything else, has found a home on the Web. By my count, nearly 700 university libraries across the U.S. current have Web sites accessible to anyone anywhere with Internet access. In the beginning, these campus libraries only made their online book catalogs available to visitors, but increasingly a whole range of journal, magazine, and newspaper indexes-- previously only available on CD-ROM in the reference room-- can now be accessed on their sites. For example, my own campus library currently offers 70 indexes or databases online, and a number allow me to retrieve full-text articles from the publications they index. These services are often limited to registered students at the university that offers them, but in some cases they are available to any visitor.

Exercise 2-4: Navigating Reference Materials

Navigate is the key word here. There are literally thousands of encyclopedias and indexes and almanacs and directories and databases and catalogs and bibliographies in the reference room. As you make your way through this cluttered landscape it's easy to get lost. Start with the basics, the reference sources most often consulted by writers of college research papers. This exercise will give you such a workout. It's a self-teaching exercise. You work at your own pace, though most students can work through it in about two to three hours. Print out a copy of the these pages and use it to fill in the information requested in each step of the exercise.

Whenever possible, use this exercise to begin researching your tentative research topic, if you have one, though in some cases, that won't be possible since it is intended to introduce you to a range of reference materials, some of which may not be relevant to the topic you're considering. Some of the steps can be done accessing the library's references through the Web, others must be done in the reference room.

Knowing What to Look For

Step 1 : If you've got a topic, describe it in a few words here.

Step 2 : Now find the Library of Congress Subject Headings. It may be available at the reference desk. Otherwise ask the librarian where it's shelved, or check the card catalog. The LC Subject Headings lists the standard headings used by most libraries to catalog information. It's an easy way to find out one or more headings that will quickly yield useful sources on your subject. Consult the LCSH with your topic in mind, and jot down several headings that seem promising.

General Encyclopedias: Getting a Lay of the Land

Using a general encyclopedia is a little like looking through the wrong end of binoculars. You get the long view of the subject. Encyclopedias like Britannica can be a good starting point for a research project, particularly if you're trying to find ways to narrow your focus, but they generally aren't particularly authoritative sources for college-level papers. They're just too general. That's particularly true of CD-ROM encyclopedias like Encarta, which often don't even have bibliographies attached to articles.

There is now a CD-ROM version and an online version of even the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica. The principle of advantage of these new formats is that they include relevant Internet links at the end of many articles, expanding the range of information you might find on a topic. Britannica Online is now a free service. I'll confess that I'm an old fuddy-duddy about encyclopedias; I don't think the electronic versions hold a candle to the ones printed on paper. If you're going to use a general encyclopedia, trek over to the library and use the 30 volume bound version of font-family: Encyclopedia Britannica. For now, though, head straight to the book that will provide you with another kind of landscape shot.

Surveying the Reference Landscape

Balay's font-family: Guide to Reference Books (in earlier editions, it was edited by Sheehy), ⁽¹⁾ is as close as reference books get to being a sacred text. Now in its eleventh edition, the Guide indexes nearly 16,000 indexes, bibliographies, specialized encyclopedias, handbooks, almanacs, and other references that will directly provide information-- or citations for other publications that will provide information-- on thousands of topics. The Guide will reveal to you-- maybe for the first time-- the incredible variety of references that are available these days, including some electronic texts. The book is organized by field of study (e.g. Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences, History, Science and Technology, etc.), but the index at the back is the place to start. The Guide to Reference Books (GRB) takes some getting used to but once you know how to use it you'll be amazed at how helpful it can be for any academic research project. It may even inspire prayer.

Smaller libraries may not have Balay's book but Reference Sources for Small and Medium-Sized Libraries ⁽²⁾, which is a fine alternative to the heftier Guide.

Step 3 :Find the Guide to Reference Books (or Kennedy's Reference Sources) in the reference room of the library. Check the index in the back of the book, using the topic headings you found in the LCSH or any others that you think might work. With luck, you'll find a subject area that encompasses your topic, as one student studying television violence did when he found a whole range of sources on radio and television. Sometimes, though, you won't find a relevant subject in the index; in that case, look in the front of the book at the more general subject headings. For example, I searched for "Internet addiction" in the index and couldn't even find the more general heading "Internet." I flipped to general subject headings and found the pages for GENERAL WORKS under "Science, Technology, and Medicine." That took me to a great list of guides, indexes, and bibliographies, several of which would lead me to the best reference sources for research in computer technology. The GENERAL WORKS section begins each subject chapter, and it's a great place to begin if the index fails you. In particular, keep your eye out for guides aimed at researchers, including students, that introduce you not only to the key references in the subject area but strategies for conducting research in related disciplines. Try to find one good entry in the GRB that seems relevant to your project, and list the bibliographic information below. (Don't bother to try to find the reference in your library yet).

Type of Source (circle):   Index    Almanac    Bibliography    Dictionary    Encyclopedia    Directory    Handbook    Other

Author:

Title:

Publication information:

Comment:

Finding Books

The card catalog is just about a goner. This makes me sad. There was something oddly satisfying about working my way through well-thumbed cards looking for a book, flipping one after another, waiting for that one magical title-- the book that would save my paper-- to appear between my fingers. Most academic libraries have moved to online cataloguing systems, and this has obvious advantages. It's faster. It's easier. It can provide more information (like, for example, whether the book is currently available or not). It's more accessible (most online systems can be accessed through the Internet). But I still miss the satisfying sound of card flicking.

What has changed very little in recent years about cataloging books is the indexing system, and it's quite helpful to know how that works.

The Library of Congress system, which uses both letters and numbers, is much more common in college libraries. Call numbers begin with one or two letters, signifying a category of knowledge, and then are followed by a whole number between 1-9999. Decimals and one or more Cutter numbers sometimes follow. It's a pretty complex system, but it's not hard to use. As you get deeper in your research you'll begin to recognize call numbers that consistently yield useful books, and it sometimes helpful to simply browse those shelves for other possibilities. A list by subject of Library of Congress classifications is below:

A General Works

B-BJ Philosophy, Psychology

BL-BX Religion

C Auxiliary Sciences of History

D History: General and Old World

E-F History: America

G Geography

H Social Sciences

J Political Science

K Law

KD Law of the United Kingdom and Ireland

KE Law of Canada

KF Law of the U.S.

L Education

M Music

N Fine Arts

P-PA General Philology and Linguistics. Classical Languages and Literatures.

PB-PH Modern European Languages

PG Russian Literature

PJ-PM Languages and Literature of Asia, Africa, Oceania, American Indian, Artificial Languages

PN, PR, PS, PZ General Literature. English and American.

PQ French, Italian, Spanish and Portugese Literature.

PT German, Dutch, and Scandinavian Literature.

Q Science

R Medicine

S Agriculture

T Technology

U Military Science

V Naval Science

Z Bibliography, Library Science, Reference

Understanding Call Numbers ⁽³⁾ . The call number, that strange code on the spine of a library book, is something most of us want to understand just well enough to find that book on the shelf. How much do you need to know? First, you should know that there is more than the alphabet at work in arranging books by their call numbers, and that call numbers tell you more than merely where books are shelved.

For example, the following call number (see Figure 1.x) tells you the subject area of the book, a little something about its author, and when the book was published. This is useful to know not only because it will help you find the book, but it might prompt you to find other, possibly more recent books on the same subject nearby.

Read a call number from top to bottom (or left to right if displayed horizontally). While alphabetical and numerical order are key to understanding the sequencing of books in the library, the third line of a call number is a weird combination of letters and decimals. This always mystified me

In Figure 1.X below, you can see how Library of Congress call numbers determine the arrangement of books on the shelf. The only tricky part is that odd letter and decimal combination in the third line of the call number. Note that the small decimal number (.B22) precedes a larger one (.B27). The year a book was published also determines its position on the shelf.

Your library probably still has an active card catalog, and you already know how to use that. Remember that cards are organized by subject, author, or title. At this point, you'll likely look under promising subject headings, perhaps suggested by what you found in the LC Subject Headings. Make sure you pay attention to "see" or "see also" cards. They'll suggest other useful headings to check. But maybe your college library, like mine, has begun to retire its 3 x 5 cards in favor on an online card catalog. A computer will do the same thing for you that thumbing through the card catalog used to, and it's much faster. Search subject, author, title, or a "keyword" that explains the topic you want to find. But even if your library does have an online card catalog, don't necessarily abandon those old 3x5 catalog cards. Conversion from the old system to the new one is expensive and laborious, and you may find some sources, particularly older ones, that are not yet logged into the computer system. Ask the library staff about that.

Step Five : Give the online system, Catalyst, a try. Look up your tentative topic under a promising subject heading(s), and list at least one book that seems promising, noting all the bibliographic information in case you end up citing it in your paper. If your topic is current or doesn't otherwise lend itself to treatment in books (there aren't many topics like that), find a book on a subject that does interest you, like, say, fiberglass repair.

Now go retrieve the book from the stacks. Look for a chart on the wall that lists on what floors each category of call numbers are shelved, or ask the reference librarian. At a larger university, you may discover that the book you need is in another library on campus. For example, my college has separate physics, engineering, bioscience, nursing libraries. Getting a book from one of these involves a short hike.

If the book is missing, check to see if it was mis-shelved or may be in on the "waiting shelves," which are where books that have recently been returned gather before they're re-shelved by the library staff. Finally, consult someone at the circulation desk to find out if they know where the book might be. If you found your book, write down the first sentence of the first full paragraph on page ten.

Sentence on Page Ten:

If you can't find your book, explain what you discovered about its fate at the circulation desk or from the online catalog (when it's due back, whether it's being re-bound, or it's lost, etc.)

Status of the Missing Book:

Interlibrary Loan

If the library doesn't have the book (or journal article) you want, don't despair. If you've got enough lead time (a few weeks), the library can get it from another library through Interlibrary Loan, a service provided at most college libraries through the reference desk. It's usually free, and simply involves filling out a search form.

Checking the bibliography

At the back of many books are bibliographies, or a list of other books and articles that contributed to the work. Sometimes these can be mined for additional sources that might be useful to you. If the book you found has a bibliography, scan the titles and write down at least one promising source you find there, if there is one.

Source(s) from Bibliography:

Finding Magazine and Journal Articles

It used to be that those green, well-thumbed volumes of the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature were the only game in town if you were after an article published in a general interest magazine. However, now electronic indexes have largely replaced the old Reader's Guide. While the Guide is still invaluable for finding articles published before 1990 (and as early as 1890) that may not be included in the new databases, online indexes are much easier to use. But perhaps the real weakness of the Reader's Guide, particularly for academic research, is that it's mostly an index of non-scholarly sources like Time, Redbook, and Sports Illustrated. There's nothing wrong with these publications. In fact, you may end up using a few in your essay. But as you dig more deeply into your subject, you may find that the information in popular periodicals will often begin to tell you what you already know.

Many of the electronic databases include popular magazines, but they also index some scholarly journals as well. That's another reason they're so useful. And they're available twenty-four hours a day to students who have Internet access to their university library's web page. For example, EBSCO MasterFILE indexes nearly 3000 journals and magazines, and even provides full-text articles-- rather than simply citations-- from over 1800 periodicals. Another online index, UnCover, has a database of over 18000 magazines and journals, and claims to describe nearly 9 million articles published since 1988. Full text copies of some articles from UnCover are available for a fee, but you always get a full citation which might be useful. No charge. Web-based references like EBSCO MasterFile and UnCover are often available through your campus library's Web page. In many cases, you have to be an enrolled student to use them, but a number of online indexes are free for any visitor to use.

Step Six : Use one of the online periodical indexes like the Expanded Academic Index. Review the commands and begin a search for articles on your topic. If you're in the library, ask for help if you need it. Find a useful citation and take the following notes on it.

If Expanded Academic Index or Reader's Guide didn't produce for you, you might try different subject headings, or perhaps articles on your topic were published more than three years ago. Check the printed version of Reader's Guide for older articles, but remember that one measure of the value of a source in an academic paper is its currency. Finally, it's possible, though unlikely, that your topic just doesn't lend itself to treatment in periodicals. If so, try another topic that interests you to get some practice with periodical indexes.

But you may discover, much to your delight, that Magazine Index provides you with a long list of periodicals that seem helpful. But there's a hitch: your library may not have all of them. You may be able to find that out quickly by consulting a catalog produced by your library that lists its periodical subscriptions and where each is located. Ask the reference staff where it is.

For the moment, don't bother hunting down any periodicals. You'll have time for that later. Generally periodicals published more than a year ago are bound together and shelved alphabetically on a floor in your main library, or in one of the satellite libraries on your campus. Current issues, published within the last year, are often shelved separately, unbound.

Indexes to Specialized Periodicals

While Time and Sports Illustrated were great sources for that paper on steroid use by high school athletes you wrote for English last year, you will soon find that as you research this college paper popular periodicals quickly stop telling you much that's new to you. They can be a good source for memorable quotes, anecdotes, or case studies, but often the articles are written by nonexpert whose treatment of your topic is fairly superficial, at least for an academic paper. You need to dig deeper.

If you used the Magazine Index for Step Six, you may have discovered a few periodicals appearing on your printout, like Science, Foreign Affairs, or Psychology Today, which are somewhat more authoritative, partly because they are written for a less general audience. But the college researcher should make a practice of consulting scholarly publications, whenever possible. Simply put, these are periodicals written for and by people in their respective fields. For example, the American Journal of Political Science is one of a handful of periodicals read by political scientists. English instructors might read College English, and psychologists Psychology Review.

Getting through articles in scholarly journals like these may sometimes be difficult--the terminology may be unfamiliar to you, and the prose pretty dense--but often it's well worth the effort because you'll uncover information on your topic you won't find anywhere else. With a little practice, you'll learn to skim journal articles for useful information. Sometimes journal articles are reports of new studies, which makes them "primary sources" (see page for a further explanation of primary and secondary sources), or feature analyses by people who are leaders in their field. Skillful use of scholarly sources in your paper can be a big boost. They not only enhance the authority of your paper, you'll discover that through your familiarity with some of the important thinkers on your topic, you become something of an expert yourself.

But how do you find them? Not surprisingly, there are computer databases--many now on CD-ROM--and bound indexes to choose from. If your library has it, the compact disc technology has enormous advantages in searching for journal articles, but you should be familiar with the key bound indexes, too. They're listed below. All are published by the same company that produces the Reader's Guide, so they're similarly organized and used.

Five Key Journal Indexes

If your library has computer workstations rigged to use compact discs, then you may rarely have to consult the printed indexes above to find journal articles on your topic. The books are worth checking when the database you consult doesn't cover the years you need, or you want to look for articles published in the last few months. Though the CD's are often updated several times a year, they frequently won't contain the most recent issues of the journals they cover. The indexes listed above are also general indexes of academic journals. There are a multitude of printed specialized indexes you might want to check that aren't on CD. For example, if you're writing a paper on deforestation in the Pacific Northwest, it might be worth checking the Environmental Index as well as the General Science Index on CD.

But in most college libraries, the new CD's are the easier, more efficient way to search for academic articles. There are between 1500 and 3000 databases available to libraries on CD, and more appear every day. Many of the general indexes listed above are on CD. The really good news is that many of these databases are also available over the Internet. That means you can access them at home as well as in the library. The following databases that are popular with college researchers.

Step Seven: Search one or more of the indexes above--either the bound indexes or, if your library has them, the appropriate databases on CD--for scholarly articles on your topic. These databases are also available on the library Web site so you can access them at home. Try several subject headings.

For one citation that seems promising, take down the following:

If you came up empty-handed, you may have to find a more specialized index in the field you're working. You'll have the chance to do that next week (see "Looking Under Rocks," page ). It's also possible that your topic simply hasn't been a scholarly concern. That doesn't necessarily mean you should jettison your idea. You may be able to find plenty of good sources other than journal articles. But for practice try looking up something else that interests you in one of the indexes, like alcohol abuse patterns among college students.

If you did come up with some promising journal citations, don't bother hunting them down now.

Newspaper articles

Not every newspaper is indexed. Generally, only those publications considered "national newspapers" are catalogued and saved, usually on microfilm, but also on CD. Among them are The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. . National newspapers that are indexed each have their own bound volumes, or are included on a computer database like Newsbank or a microfilm index like the Newspaper Index. They are also available on the Web.

Until lately, state and local papers were rarely indexed. Once again, the Internet has changed all that. Increasingly the archives of smaller newspapers are searchable through the World Wide Web. A number of newspapers have their own Web sites that offer this (check Yahoo.com for a listing of newspaper sites by state). But your campus library Web site is the place to begin searching for online indexes to newspapers. In addition to Web-based archives for local papers, you may find newspaper search services like Newspaper Source from EBSCO or ProQuest Direct, both of which allow you to search a number of papers, national or not, across the country. If your tentative research topic is local or current or controversial then newspapers can be a useful source. You'll rarely get much in-depth information or analysis from a newspaper, but they can often provide good quotes, anecdotes, case studies, and the most current printed information available on your topic. They're also sometimes considered primary sources because they provide first-hand accounts of things that happened.

Step Eight : Check a national newspaper index. You might consult the bound version of the New York Times Index, or an online index. Here are several at the BSU library:

National Newspaper Index

Wall Street Journal

Newspaper Source

Try several subject headings, and note the "see also" prompts. If your topic doesn't lend itself to coverage in newspapers, find the New York Times on microfilm that was published on the day of your birth. If your library has a machine for photocopying from microfilm, make a copy of an article on your topic, or the front page of the Times published on your birthday. Attach it to this exercise when you hand it in. If there is no copying machine, take down the following information:

Government Documents

The United States Government is the largest publisher in the world, and if your college library is a "depository" for government documents it may receive almost everything the federal government publishes. Usually there's one depository library in each state. Non-depository libraries may still receive government documents, though, and most college libraries do have a selective collection which is sometimes catalogued separately. The great thing about government documents is that they cover a broad range of subjects. The bad news is that you may go nuts trying to find what you're looking for. Because government publications often arrive in a pile daily at your campus library, the staff has its hands full cataloguing and shelving the material. Government document librarians sometimes live on the edge of chaos.

As always, there are printed and online indexes to government documents. The most important, the Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications, is available in both forms. You can search a document in the Monthly Catalog by author, title, subject, series, stock number, and title keyword. Another online index is the Government Periodicals Universe. Our library also has the Government Periodicals Index available on CD, which is drawn from the Monthly Catalog. As always there are also Web-based indexes to government documents, including something called GPO Access. It's located at the following address:

http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/index.html

Step Nine : Check one of the indexes above to see if there are any government documents on your topic that seem promising. Try a few possible subject headings and go back a few years if you need to. If you find something interesting, take down the bibliographic information below.

If you got nowhere looking in a government publications index, it's possible that your topic just doesn't lend itself to that source. The best bets obviously are topics that have to do with law, government, public policy, and the like. Just for practice, try a topic that will work better--say, find out whether the government has published anything on student loans.

Don't bother hunting down the document in your library. You can do that later. For now, reward yourself with an Almond Joy; you've finished the library exercise, and are familiar with the most important reference sources used by college researchers. You also may be well on your way through the initial stage of research on your tentative topic. Next week, you'll refine your research strategy and learn about a few more reference sources that are more specialized. These can be especially useful if you're having trouble finding information.

You've now completed the exercise!

1. Robert Balay, ed., Guide to Reference Books, 11^th ed. (Chicago: American Library Association, 1996)

2. Scott Kennedy, ed., Reference Sources for Small and Medium-Sized Libraries, 6^th ed. (Chicago: American Library Association, 1999).

3. "Understanding Call Numbers" is adapted from the Web site of Hawaii Community College library and used with their permission.

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