Navigating the Library

Navigating the Library — page 3 — YOU CONDUCT RESEARCH EVERY DAY AND YOU PROBABLY DON’T EVEN REALIZE IT When you want to know the score of last night’s football game you check on line If you’re wondering how to spell or deﬁne supercilious you get out the dictionary And when you’ve forgotten the math assignment you e-mail your friends to ask them Although these research situations are rather informal the skills you use for them are similar to those you need to conduct research for writing After all research is basically just a search a search for sources that contain speciﬁc relevant and accurate information about your topic At some point during nearly every research project you will ﬁnd yourself in need of a library Why Libraries contain information that you can’t get any where else and that information is organized in a way that makes it easy to complete a systematic search Say for example that you want to research Mt Everest The library can provide you with autobiographies by the ﬁrst men to ever reach the summit videos of the Himalayas and even online journal articles 4

Navigating the Library — page 4 — about scientiﬁc studies that have been done on the mountain Although every library is unique most libraries follow similar systems for organizing their items cataloging their holdings and lending materials to patrons In addition nearly every library features one indispensable resource the reference librarian who can help you in your quest for information So the next time you need to look something up make the library one of your ﬁrst stops It will likely have what you need and then some 5

Navigating the Library — page 5 — LOOKING TO THE LIBRARY 6

Navigating the Library — page 6 — WITH SO MUCH INFORMATION AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET TODAY it may seem like a waste of time to visit the library Aren’t those places just for people who don’t know how to use computers Actually no Libraries are useful for almost everyone The works on a library’s shelves represent more than 2,000 years worth of information and many of the particular resources in which that information can be found are not available online Only a small percentage of books can be accessed online for example and journal articles often appear only in print or through a library’s online subscription Sure a library search may take a bit more time than simply googling a few terms but the results will also likely be more relevant and more reliable And it’s not as if library research doesn’t involve computers In fact the majority of libraries use online book catalogs and subscribe to a number of online journals In most cases you can even access these resources from a computer outside the library Today there are more than 122,000 libraries in the United States The vast majority about 99,000 are school libraries another 9,000 are public libraries and the remainder are academic at universities government and special libraries belonging to companies or dedicated to a speciﬁc ﬁeld such as medicine or law In addition there is one national library the Library of Congress in Washington D C that collects copies of as much of the literature produced in the country as possible along with many international works Help please 7

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