LIBRARY RESOURCES

MELANIE PARLETTE, BA, MLIS

ENGINEERING & IT LIAISON

LIBRARY RESOURCE CENTRE

CONESTOGA COLLEGE

TODAY YOU’LL LEARN . . .• About the Library website and that you have an Research

Help Guide (and that this is helpful)

• How to search the library catalogue

• What a database is, how to search it and why you need it for your assignment

PIN NUMBERS

You can use your PIN to:

• Access resources from Off-Campus• Renew a book, place a hold• Review your account

LIBRARY HOMEPAGE(AND YOUR EXPLORE GUIDE)

www.conestogac.on.ca/lrcHighlights:

• LRC Hours• AskON• Library Catalogue• Research Help• E-Resources• Contact Us

LIBRARY CATALOGUEQ: What can you find in the library catalogue?

A: Anything that is physically housed in the library!

Let’s take a look…

TYPES OF SOURCESWhat’s the Difference?

Scholarly Journals Popular Magazines Trade Journals Conference Papers Technical Reports

• Scholarly research or projects. 

• Illustrations are usually charts and graphs.

• Authors are authorities in their field. Often professors or researchers.

• Peer review process is in place where the content of an article is reviewed by one or more experts in the field.

Examples:Journal of Facilities

Management, Facilities

• General interest articles, entertainment, or information aimed at the consumer.  Usually colour photographs and illustrations.

• Articles are usually written by magazine staff, freelance writers, or may be anonymous.

• No peer review or refereeing process.

Examples:Wired, Popular

Mechanics

• Industry related information, news and trends.  Some illustrations.

• Authors are industry experts, professionals, or practitioners who are not always identified

• Typically no peer review or refereeing process.

Examples:Today’s Facility

Manager, Building and Facilities Management

• Author is scholar in field, academic or researcher

• Conference papers tend to be more recent than journal articles, but may be considered less authoritative depending on the review and acceptance process

• Peer Review Process may or may not be rigorous

Example:Proceedings of the CIB

W070 International Conference in Facilities Management

• Author is often a scholar or a scientist, engineer, government contractor, or technical personnel.

• Published by a corporation or educational institution

• Reputation is everything

• Typically not peer reviewed

Example:2010 Energy Efficiency

Indicator

DATABASES

What is an electronic article database?

• Online / web-based collection of:• Magazines• Newspapers• Journals

• Includes professional journal articles

• Databases are usually organized by major subject i.e. nursing, business, science, etc.

• You choose a database based on your topic• Each database contains millions of articles, searchable by keyword

WHAT DO I SEARCH FOR?

FacilityManagement

Building LifeCycle

EnergyEfficiency

Built Environment

Security

RiskAssessment

FireProtection

Building AutomationSystems

Built Environment

EmergencyProcedures

SEARCHING A DATABASE. . .

SEARCHING A DATABASE. . .

* (the asterisk wildcard)As the name implies, * can be substituted for any number of letters. This is particularly useful to include all words with a certain term and any suffix after it. Simply apply the asterisk to the end of a term and it will return all documents containing that term, followed by anything. For example: biostatistic* will find biostatistician or biostatistics or biostatistical

SEARCHING A DATABASE. . .

Quotation Marks: " "Enclose specific phrases in quotation marks. This will direct the search engine to search the database for documents containing that exact phrase. A search for analytical chemist (without quotes) will return any document containing analytical and chemist with anything in between. If you place quotes around the phrase, searching for “facility management“ it will only documents with facility and management right beside each other.

WHAT IS GOOGLE SCHOLAR?

A search interface for locating citations to academic research—and accessing the full-text online (sometimes).

This is the definition of any research database.

Google Scholar is just one more in a host of research tools similar to those offered by the library (but using it is free to all).

Reading articles found in it is not free (not always, anyway).

WHAT CAN YOU SEARCH USING GOOGLE SCHOLAR?

“…articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.”

•Some resources are “open access,” i.e. free

•Many have a cost-per-article

•The LRC can help improve access to the costly articles (but more on that later)

Google. (2011). About Google Scholar. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.ca/intl/en/scholar/about.html

WHAT CAN’T YOU FIND USING GOOGLE SCHOLAR?

• Google doesn’t search everything, and neither does Google Scholar

• Only searches “scholarly” sources

• So it does not search the following resources:

• Newspapers• Trade Magazines• Professional Magazines• General Interest Magazines

GOOGLE ≠ GOOD• What exactly is included? We don’t know and Google

won’t say.

• Calls into question content providers, i.e. how does Google define “scholarly”?

• Good for “casual” research, but not acceptable as a single source for coverage of the literature on a topic.

• Coverage is unknown• Relevancy Ranking of search results is questionable• Narrowing/sorting search results is rudimentary• No controlled vocabulary• Citations may be inaccurate due to reliance of web

crawling extraction (e.g. Author Name: P Login)

Jacsó, P. Google Scholar's ghost authors. Library Journal 134: 26-27.

LINKING TO LRC RESOURCES• Go to Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.ca)

• Click “Scholar Preferences” in upper right hand of the search page.

• On the Scholar Preferences page, in the “Library Links” section, enter for “Conestoga” in the search box and click “Find Library”.

• Checkboxes appear below the search box.

• Checkmark the Conestoga links.

• Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Save Preferences.”

• Your searches will now show links to Conestoga LRC resources that contain articles from your search results.

GET HELP AT THE LIBRARY

• By Email• mparlette@conestogac.on.ca• lrcinfo@conestogac.on.ca

• Online• IM Chat on the LRC Contact Us Page• Or in the APFM “Research Help”

• In Person• Visit the Cambridge LRC• Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri 8:30 AM – 4:00 PM• Wed 8:30 AM – 7:30 PM

• By Phone• Information Desk @ 519-748-5220 x3361