Library Day Log
Instead of meeting in class, we met at Dirac science library so Liz could give us a presentation on academic research. First she showed things the library had to offer like the circulation desk. Then, we talked about using the internet and google as a place for research and how sources from internet searches can be sketchy because it’s hard to determine the credibility of information you find. Instead of going through the effort of determining if a site or author is credible, Liz taught us about FSU libraries, the right place to do all our research.
We learned about a few really helpful features. The first and most important one is the databases. FSU is subscribed to over 450 databases that provide publications that are already verified for credibility on any topic. The top three ones to use for the purpose of our research project are Academic Search Complete (the biggest database), Google Scholars, and Jstor. IN these databases, you search keywords and all the publications with those keywords written somewhere in them will be provided. When you first start to search these databases, there’s a couple important rules to know. Before searching, make sure to limit your results to full texts. Also, you can’t search questions, only keywords, so don’t bother putting in things such as the, is, or if. However, when searching you can put and, not, or or in-between keywords to include, exclude, or provide one or the other type results. Asterisks at the end of keywords add all variants of keywords and quotes around keywords make sure both words are written together (meaning right next to each other in the text such as Disney and princess versus Disney princess). Once you search, it’s important to also narrow your results. There’s multiple source types but the ones we want are the scholarly peer reviewed academic journals.
Another feature available for research is the onesearch option at the top right of the FSU libraries page. This feature searches all FSU resources, meaning all books, databases, and other materials, for information on your topic. Often this can provide a surplus amount of results to navigate through so with this feature it’s important to use the filter options.
We also learned about citation. On FSU’s homepage, if you click the citation management circle it provides you with tools to help citing works you used. We created a refworks account, the new version in blue, and learned all of its options. It allows you to take any works you find in the databases and save them so they can all be in one place. To save publications, go to the text’s page in the database, then click the export button on the right side, then click direct export to refworks, then export to proquest (the blue option), which will put it in the last imported section on your refworks. After this, go back to the publication page in the database and click the PDF full text option on the left, download the pdf, then go to refworks and click on the publication, which will pull up a sidebar with all the bibliography information. In the top right corner of the sidebar, click the pencil, add attachment, and then save it. Also, refworks can cite and create bibliographies for you. To create a bibliography, go to the select option in refworks, click the quotation marks, and click create bibliography. Of course, it’s possible for there to be errors in the citations so always be sure to still double check them.
Another tool we saw was the Ask a Librarian tool. You can ask any question you might have, whether it be the library hours or help on finding some research, and one of the librarians working will respond and help you out.
One last feature we learned that the FSU library site has to help you out is research guides, which are like starter kits for subjects and classes at FSU. If you missed Wednesdays class, or just need any refreshers on how to work the FSU libraries site, you can go to the FSU library home page, then click the research guides circle and search ENC2135. This brings you to this classes research guide and everything we learned is available to look at.
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