There are two different types of information available in the resources: full-text and reference.
Currently, the main source of full-text information are the books and journals in the Library. Many resources only have the reference information - which means that you once you have found a reference you then have to find a source of the full-text version.
Some resources have an intermediate stage between full-text and reference where an abstract, or short summary, of the article is included.
The resources in the Library are of 3 main types:
Searching for books is usually done via the online catalogue, a computer system - it is sometimes known as the Library OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue), the OPAC or just the catalogue. The OPAC can be accessed from the terminals in the Library, from any networked computer on campus or from anywhere in the world connected to the Internet.
The appearance of the online catalogue changes slightly as improvements are made but will look something like this:
LANCASTER UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
ON-LINE CATALOGUE opac
Search Options
1 Title
2 Author
3 Author-Title
4 Keyword
5 Subject Index
6 Serials / Journals
7 Classmark (Shelving sequence)
8 ISBN
9 Short Loan
A Personal bibliography
B Borrower facilities
H Help
L Library Information
X Exit the catalogue
Key choice....
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The online catalogue contains an entry for each book in the Library - although multiple copies of the same book have just one entry:
AUTHOR SEARCH BENSON, Douglas
Classmark: KAH [B Floor North] ISBN: 058229584X
BENSON, Douglas
The perspective of ethnomethodology / Douglas Benson and John A. Hughes.
London : Longman, 1983. - viii,205p.
Copies 5-6 are U.M.I. reprints.
Brief Author/Title: BENSON, D/PERSPECT OF ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
6 copies.
Loan details
Vol Copy Issued Due R Recall O/Due1 O/Due2
1 1 S-LOAN.
1 3 BINDING
1 4 S-LOAN.
1 5 Pop Loan 14 OCT 96 21 OCT 96
1 6 Pop Loan 14 OCT 96 21 OCT 96
C: Continue for more details, X: Exit item (or M:, F:, B:, R: etc.)
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There are 6 copies of this book in the Library. Two of the copies (Nos.
1 & 4) have been placed on Short Loan, three of them (Nos. 3,
5 & 6) have been borrowed on Popular Loan. Copy 2 is still in
the Library. The three types of loan category are:
Short Loan - a separate collection in the Library where items in heavy demand are placed. They can only be borrowed for a few hours or overnight.
Popular Loan - books in moderate demand that can be borrowed for a week.
Long Loan - all other books.
Loan periods are usually extended during vacations.
Items in the Library are arranged by Classmarks (e.g. KAH) - items with the same Classmark are about the same topics and usually found next to each other on the shelves.
The Library produces individual printed A5 guides for many different topics - consult these for more detailed information.
The CD-ROMs (Compact Disc - Read Only Memory) are separate systems to the online catalogue, each one covering a different subject area. At the time of writing the current list of CD-ROMs in the Library is that shown in Table 1.
CD-ROMs usually cover a range of years but not all the CD-ROM discs are available online at any one time. For some databases the Library may have the earlier years on a separate disc - you may need to ask about this. The CD-ROMs usually do not have the full article, just a reference entry which tells you the important publication information: although some may have a short summary abstract.
The Internet is a network of computers around the world. Some of these computers have searchable databases you can use, e.g. the online catalogues of many university libraries, including Lancaster's, are available over the Internet.
The main resources on the Internet are:
The dividing lines between these resources are blurring all the time but we shall consider them individually.
An online database is a computer connected to the Internet that allows users to perform various types of search activities. The Lancaster University Library catalogue is an online database. A major set of online databases is located at BIDS - Bath Information & Data Services. BIDS is a gateway to several (currently 10) large databases of journal article references - i.e. it does not have the full text of the articles. Sometimes it will have a short summary of the contents of a journal article - known as an abstract.
Figure 4 shows an entry in a database at BIDS. It typically contains information about thearticle title (TI), author(s) (AU), journal name (JN), where the author(s) works / affiliation (NA), date of publication and may include a list of other articles the author(s) referenced in their paper (CR). These are known as citations, or cited references.
BIDS is a service provided to the whole UK Higher Education community. It is free to use but you will need a password - this can be obtained from the Library.
The online catalogues of other University Libraries are also useful in locating books - even if the book is not stocked at Lancaster. This can be especially useful if you will not be living close to Lancaster, but want access to books, for example because you are on vacation or on a placement. You can check the contents of most UK university libraries over the Internet to see if they have what you need and if so, enquire about obtaining reading rights (as at Lancaster Library about the procedure). A new service called COPAC has recently been made available which combines the catalogues of Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, Leeds, Glasgow and Trinity College Dublin. The library catalogues of any of the large American universities are also valuable resources, particularly the University of California system MELVYL and the Harvard University system HOLLIS.
In addition there are numerous specialised online databases available around the world - finding out about them is a search task in itself.
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a huge collection of 'pages' of information distributed around the world accessible via the Internet. The information has been placed there by individuals, companies, governments, charities, organisations etc. and there is something on virtually every subject. Each 'page' of the Web contains links, or pointers, to other Web pages so the result is a complex network of connections.
Web pages can be generated by an online database so increasingly there is a Web 'front' for the type of databases mentioned in the previous section. As researchers and lecturers in universities frequently have their own Web pages this provides another way to see what articles they have written. Increasingly researchers provide the full text of their articles via the Web.
The success of the Web has been mainly due to the computer software that is used to access Web pages: browsers. The most common Web browsers are:
These are point-and-click mouse-driven programs and versions exist for all common types of computer (e.g. PC, Macintosh, Unix X-Windows). A text-only browser, Lynx, is also available.
A Web site has an address which is used to identify it, this is known as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The URL has 3 parts,
for example the URL of one of the pages at Lancaster University is
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/homepage/students.htm
Some URLs point to the top page on a server and don't need to specify a file, for example the top level page for Lancaster University is:
This address says it is the WWW computer at Lancaster University, part of the academic network in the uk. Similarly, the URL for the opening page for Leeds University is: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/
Other countries have slightly different URL formats:
The Web contains other sorts of organisations as well as universities, here are some more URLs:
Files on the Web can be of several different types - the type is usually shown by the file suffix (filename.suffix), e.g.
Files on the Web are just the same as computer files on a local disk. Sometimes you will need to save the file and use another application (such as a word processor). See the online Web help for more information on dealing with different types of documents.
Finding things on the Web
Finding information on the Web can be difficult as there is no overall structuring system - as there is in a Library.
If you have access to the Web, the best thing to do is to try our Help pages. Just go to the Lancaster University home page, http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ and click on HELP on WWW at the bottom of the page.
At the moment there are two main ways of finding things:
A search engine will look though a collection of Web pages for a given keyword (or keywords). It will then show you a list of the ones which match - usually with a rating showing how well it thinks the pages match the query. Currently, popular search engines include
For a larger list see the University Help index, linked from the University Home Page.
Hierarchical Indices are structured collections of Web pages that are organised by subject categories - like a library. These display a series of subject areas, you choose one and get a list of sub-topics. You continue down the tree until you reach the subject area you are interested in where you get a series of links to Web pages. Hierarchical indices also allow you to search their collections via keyword - as in a search engine.
The most comprehensive of these indices is Yahoo (Yet Another Hierarchical Online Oracle), again see the online Help.
A worldwide bulletin board of electronic messages. A bit like public archived email. News requires a specialist software program to read it, a newsreader, although Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator can also read news.
It is also known as Usenet, NetNews and News. News is divided into different interest areas - each one called a newsgroup (e.g. uk.politics, rec.arts.disney, sci.physics ) They are divided up into broad groupings based on their names: the talk groups, the sci groups, the comp groups, the rec groups etc.
People all over the world post messages to News. In many Newsgroups people collect together the questions (and answers!) that are most often asked by beginners into a Frequently Asked Questions list or FAQ. These FAQs are very useful as an introduction to the topics in the Newsgroup.
For further information see the Web site:
Electronic mailing lists are similar to newsgroups but arrive as electronic mail to the subscribers rather than being publicly available. Mailing lists usually keep all the messages that are sent to them in an archive. In the UK the best known mailing list system is called mailbase. Mailbase provides a Web site with the archives of the mailing lists it supports. These archives can usually be searched - providing another online source of information.
Subscribing to a mailing list is often a very useful way of keeping up-to-date with developments in your field. To subscribe to a mailing list you must have an email account: ISS will issue you with one. Different systems vary in how you interact with the mailing list but usually you send an email to a specified computer of the form:
command mailing-list other-information
For example, many mailing use the following format to join:
subscribe Name-of-Mailing-List First-Name Last-Name
So you would send an email containing:
subscribe interesting-mailing-list Joanna Public
to the mailing list computer. Mailing lists usually have two email addresses:
Be sure to send it to the right address - nothing irritates the members of a mailing list more than receiving the commands of other people!
After you join a mailing list you will usually receive an acknowledgement and an introductory guide to the mailing list.
The Subject Librarians in the Library are there to help you find things. They know about the various books and journals in their fields and the various strategies to apply. It can feel quite intimidating asking for help, particularly when you are quite vague yourself about what you actually want, but don't be afraid, the Subject Librarians are keen to help and they enjoy a challenge!
Your lecturers are also very useful sources of information and are usually very happy to help when time permits. The only exception is when they have set an exercise where part of the task is for you to try and find the information without their help. This is an important skill in its own right and is becoming increasingly valued by employers. However remember that one of the skills in searching for information is to make use of the knowledge of other people.
Lecturers often take journals not in libraries and so may know about their contents or perhaps even let you borrow an issue. They can often help by giving you pointers into the literature, details of the crucial papers or important authors, or places where you are best to start looking, such as which databases contain the most useful information for your topic of interest and which can be a waste of time. They can also give recommendations of other people you should talk to.
Don't forget that your fellow students can be an invaluable source of useful information, and indeed skills such as how to use the Library Computer more effectively. You probably do this already. In general at Lancaster we are very keen to encourage students to learn from each other. The person doing the teaching also benefits: it helps them to clarify their ideas (you only really understand something when you to teach it to someone else) and again helping is a useful skill valued by industry.
Remember that there are limits to how much you can make use of the knowledge of other people. You must make sure that you are not breaching the rules about plagiarism. Check with your tutor if you are unsure. When acquiring information, asking your friends is morally no worse that asking a subject librarian (though the results may or may not be as good!) and the latter is of course perfectly acceptable. How you use the information is where you have to be careful. Making use of information obtained by or from others is fine provided that you acknowledge it. Whoever you ask for help, make sure that you are now able to do on your own the particular search technique that they used. This will be useful for future searches; it will save you time and you will be able to help someone in your turn.