Saints search and academic databases allow us to specify what types of information sources we want to find through the format filter. For scholarly research, important formats to start with include articles, books and e-books, and book chapters.
In many fields, articles are vitally important forms of communication between scholars, and as students we will be expected to become very familiar with important articles in our fields. Articles are especially effective in communicating developments in theory, practice, ethics, etc. Below is a video on using the format filter to find articles, including a discussion of interlibrary loan, a process through which we can request articles that our library cannot access.
Critical question: How do I specifically find articles in Saints search?
Supporting question:
Ebooks and ebook chapters are both significant ways scholars communicate. Saints search allows us to find ebooks and, in most cases, allows us to find individual ebook chapters. The following videos show how we find these information formats with Saints search.
Critical Question: How can Saints search help us ebooks and ebook chapter to help us conduct richer research?
Even though many academic fields have come to rely on articles as a primary means of scholarly/academic communication, books still have great value, especially when it comes to areas of disciplines like theory, ethics, and general trends in research. In many cases, books cover research areas in far more depth than articles and also pull together learning from many, many sources.
One particularly important form of scholarly/academic communication is book chapters in edited collections; these are collections of essays on a common topic, usually put together from one or several editors who are also experts in the field. These chapters frequently offer a snapshot on particular developments in a field, offer views on historical developments in a field, provide case studies on methodology in a field, etc. Book chapters can be found in both print and e-books. Below is a video on using Saints Search to find print books.
Critical question: How can Saints search help us find print books that can support our research?
Supporting question:
When going upstairs to find a book, it can be helpful to know how they are organized. The O'Grady Library, like most other academic libraries uses a system of organization that relies on Library of Congress Subject Headings, a scheme that tries to organize knowledge into 21 categories, each indicated with a letter of the alphabet. These general categories are the basis of call numbers, which we can think of as "addresses" for where books should be placed on the shelves.
Each of these general categories has a number of subcategories indicated by a second letter and then by subsequent sets of numbers and letters. Materials are grouped by topic. It's a complex code, so we don't need to understand it in detail, but it helps to have some general understanding of the system so we can find print books. NOTE: If we are looking for DVDs, they are also organized in this way. Below is just a brief example of a call number. Again, we just need a general idea of what we're looking at when we look at call numbers.
On the upper-level of the library, the books are organized by these categories and the space is laid out in this way:
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