Introduction
Even though many resources are now available in electronic format through full-text periodical databases and Internet sites, the library's book collection is still the foundation of research. Reference books such as encyclopedias and dictionaries help define terms, give background information, and give statistics. Longer books provide a level of detail and analysis that cannot be found in magazine articles or on a web site. Also when information is found in a book, you can be more confident that the author has some background and expertise in his subject. Electronic resources might be more up-to-date than many of the books in a collection that was started years ago, but even older books can still provide historical background for a topic.

Finding Books in Brown Library
Libraries organize their book collections by subject. Books on the same subject are located near each other on the shelves and are given similar call numbers. While high school and public libraries use the Dewey Decimal System, most college and university libraries use the Library of Congress System. In the Library of Congress System, letters represent broad topic areas. For example, the book titled The Animal Rights Debate has the call number: HV4711 .C63 2001. The letter H represents all books on social science, business, and economics. The HV subclass includes books on social and public welfare; protection of animals falls here. You may find related books in different areas. For example, the book titled The Private Life of a Dog; Does it Think? has the call number QL785.5 D6S56. The letter Q stands for science and the letters QL together stand for zoology.

Most of the books in the library are located on the top floor in the circulation department and are available to check out. Other books are located on the main floor in the reference department and cannot be checked out. When you look at the call number of a book, it will tell you the department or floor where it can be found. When looking for a book, pay attention to the labels on the ends of each row of shelves. These labels show the call numbers for the very first book and the very last book on that row. To find a particular book, you need to understand the correct sequence for call numbers on the shelves. Reading from left to right, the following call numbers are in the correct sequence.

Before you can go to the shelf, however, you need to identify a specific book with a specific call number. To do that, you use the book catalog available on the Brown Library web site at www.virginiawestern.edu/library. The official name for the book catalog is VCCC Linc, but in this handbook we will refer to it as the book catalog.

Home Screen

The first screen you see when you enter the book catalog is a search screen. At the top of the screen you see options for Sign-in, My Account, Preferences, and Sign-out. To log in to your library account, you use the same user name and password that you use to access Blackboard, email, library databases, and SOAR (registration). Once you log in, you can see what books you have checked out, when they are due, contact information, and more.

Also at the top of the screen you see options for searches referred to as Basic, Advanced, Browse, and Command. The Basic search is the default search and is currently selected. In this handbook we will be showing you only the basic search.

In the middle of the screen you see a drop down box with a list of search types. Next to that is a search box for entering your search topic. Next to that is another drop down menu for choosing the college you wish to search. While Virginia Western is the default college, you may choose to search any college within the Virginia Community College System.

Search Types
The search types available include: keywords, title, author, subject, ISBN and ISSN. These types are available in the drop down menu under the words "Choose Search Type." With so many choices available it can be difficult to know where to start. Each search type will give you different results. For that reason, it is best to try a combination of search types when doing research. In this handbook we will be comparing four of the types: keyword, title, author, and subject.

Before we can do a comparison of search types, it is important for you to have some background knowledge of how information is put together in a database such as the book catalog. Each book in the catalog has a unique record. In the book record, you will find author, title, publisher, date, subjects and other important information about the book. Each piece of information is in a separate field. The title is in the title field, the subject is in the subject field, and so on. When we choose a search type, we are specifying which fields of the record to look in.

Search Types: Keywords Anywhere

The Keywords Anywhere search takes your keywords and looks for them in every field of every record in the database. It is the broadest search you can do and for that reason will give you the most results. With such a broad search, you will find that some of the results will be relevant, while others only minimally so, or not all. When searching for the keywords animal rights, for example, you find a list of 20 titles in brief record view. There are 13 more on the next page, for a total of 33.

On this first page of 20, you see 18 book sources and 2 electronic sources. Let's look at the electronic sources first. The source at #11 is from the Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center database. The source at #18 is from the CQ Researcher database. Please be aware that while articles from some databases show up in the book catalog, it is not the place to start for articles on your topic. For a comprehensive search for periodical articles, please click on the "Databases" link from the Brown Library Home page. These databases are discussed in later sections of this handbook. Please note: "Keywords Anywhere" is the only search that will locate articles. With subject and title searching we are limited to finding books.

A brief record shows basic information about the book, such as author, title, date, and call number. Most of these results are specifically about animal rights; however some are not. The fourth book on the results list is a book titled IssueWeb. This book is not about animal rights, but about doing Internet research.

To see the long record view for IssueWeb, ignore the checkbox and click on #4.

In the long record view you see complete information about the book including publisher and notes. In the notes field for this book you see the keywords animal rights highlighted in bold print. We see that while the book is not about animal rights, there is a section on animal rights. If you had the book in hand you would also find that in addition to a brief discussion about animal rights, there are also annotated references to important Internet web sites for more research.

As another example, #9 on the results list is a book titled, Eat Your Genes. Again, this book is not about animal rights. If we were to look at the long record view for this book, we would see that the keywords animal rights appear in the notes field, just as they did with the previous example. However, this time the words do not appear together as a phrase. You would see the word animal in a chapter about cloning and the word rights in a chapter about property rights. Clearly, this book is not useful if your topic is animal rights.

There are two ways to make the keyword search more useful and narrow your search results. One way is to limit your search on animal rights by making it a phrase search. Do that by adding quotation marks around the keywords. This time the two words will appear together. With this new search we can expect to find fewer results.

And indeed, when we search again we find 26 results instead of 33. Seven books are missing from the previous list. Of the seven missing books, two had nothing at all to do with animal rights. Those included a book on Conrad's Heart of Darkness and a book about sexual orientation. The other five missing books are on topics such as endangered species, endangered oceans, genetically modified food, and pampered pets. While these five books are not about animal rights, they may contain information of use for a research paper on animal rights. You can see that with the phrase search you may eliminate garbage, but may also eliminate potentially useful sources.

Another way to narrow the keyword search is to add words. When we add the word experimentation to our animal rights search we come up with seven results instead of the 33 for animal rights alone. This search is definitely more focused; however, we have also eliminated several useful books from the previous search.

Search Types: Title begins with/Title Keywords
The next two searches in the drop down menu are title searches. The first is the Title begins with search. When we search for animal rights, we find a long list of books for which these are the first two words in the title. These include: Animal Rights, a Reference Handbook, The Animal Rights Debate, Animal Rights, Animal Wrongs, and Animal Rights, Opposing Viewpoints. While these are very good sources, we have also eliminated several good sources found in the keywords anywhere search.

The second title search is the Title Keywords search. When we do the animal rights search using Title Keywords, we find a list of 12 results.

This time books were found if they had the words animal rights anywhere in the title, not just as the first two words of the title. As an example, #4 is a book titled Romanticism and Animal Rights. The phrase animal rights appears in the title, but the first two words of the title are romanticism and. This search is obviously broader than the Title begins with search, but not as broad as the Keywords Anywhere search. You have lost several relevant results.

In general, the title search is not recommended when you are are researching a specific topic such as animal rights. Both the title and author searches (discussed below) are more useful when you have a specific book in mind; perhaps one recommended by your teacher, or referred to in the bibliography of another source. Most of the time, however, you will be using the Keywords Anywhere and subject searches (also discussed below) and comparing the results.

Search Types: Author (last name first)/Author Keywords
The next two searches in the drop down menu are author searches. The first is the Author (last name first) search. Like the Title begins with search, this one is is an exact search. When you enter an author's last name you must enter the last name and then the first name in that order. If you are not sure of the first name you may omit it. Here is a sample search for animal rights author, Tom Regan.

Here is another sample search, this time for any author with the last name Regan.

We find two authors named Regan: Tom Regan and Robert Regan.

Search Types: Subject (LC) begins with/Subject Keywords
The next four searches in the drop down menu are subject searches. We will look at the first two. In comparison with the Keywords Anywhere search, we find that the subject searches are more precise. With the Keywords Anywhere search we looked in all fields of a record, including the author, title, notes and subject fields. In contrast, the subject searches look only in the subject fields. Each book in the database is assigned one or more subject headings. This assignment is made by a human cataloger who examines the book closely to see what it is about.

The first subject search is the Subject (LC) begins with search.

When we search for animal rights we find a list of subject headings, each starting with the words animal rights.

The first subject heading in the list is Animal Rights. If we click on that subject heading, we find 12 books. The next subject heading is Animal Rights-Encyclopedias. This is an example of a subject heading with an added subdivision. The purpose of the subdivision is to narrow the subject search into a smaller, more focused list of titles. This time when we click, we see one book. Other subdivisions of animal rights include: Great Britain, Philosophy, and Moral and Ethical Aspects. The ability to limit the search with subdivisions is a unique feature of subject searching. You do not have that option with the keyword, author, or title searches.

The second subject search is the Subject Keywords search.

When we do this search, we get a list of 20 results. This time instead of subdivisions we see a list of titles arranged in order by date.

If you examine this list closely you will find that all of the titles in this second search were also found in the first search, but arranged a different way. While this search in this example did not produce any extra results, sometimes you will pick up an extra title by doing the Subject Keywords search.

Full Record View
Lets look at the long record view for the book titled Animal Experimentation. Click on #1 to bring it up.

In the full record view we see more information about the book than the brief record view. The additional information includes the publisher and place of publication, as well as subjects and notes. It is important to look at the full record so that you can obtain the publisher information for citing sources.

To find out if the book is available, look at the location line at the bottom of the screen. The word "Location" is emphasized in bold type. Next to it is a line highlighted and underlined in blue. This line shows the VCCS campus location, department, and call number of the book.

Normally, you will be searching only for books at Virginia Western and the location line will show this. It will also show the department/floor where you can find the book. Books will either be located in the circulating collection on the top floor or in reference on the main floor. Circulating books check out, reference books do not. Next to the department information you will see the call number. This number tells you where the book is on the shelf. It does not show all the information you need, however. It does not show availability information. To find out more, click on the highlighted campus location.

Here you find information about book availability. Look at the column labeled "Due date". If a book is available, you will see the words "On Shelf." If a book is checked out, you will see the due date.

English 111 Assignment
For Step B, find two books about your topic. Look them up in the book catalog. Make a citation in MLA format and also record the call number. Please be aware that book titles on the screen are not punctuated in MLA format. On the screen, only the first letter of the first word in the book title is capitalized. In an MLA citation you should capitalize not only the first letter of the first word, but the first letter of every significant word in the title. See the example below and compare it to the screen image above.

Mur, Cindy, ed. Animal Experimentation. San Diego CA: Greenhaven P, 2004.

Call number  HV4915.A634 2004