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 Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways has the call number: PS3515 .E37 Z54 2004. The letter P represents all books on language and literature. The PS subclass includes books on American literature. You may find related books in different areas. For example, the book titled Ernest Hemingway: A Documentary Volume has the call number PN466 .D52. The PN subclass is for television, theater, and journalism. Ernest Hemingway was not only a famous American novelist, but a journalist as well. Thus, it makes sense that books about him may fall in either the PS or PN areas.

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.

Search Screen

The first screen you see when you enter the book catalog is the basic 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.

Basic Search Types
The basic 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.

Basic Search Types: Keywords Anywhere
First, let's try the Keywords Anywhere search. 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.

To see how this works, let's do a search on Ernest Hemingway. With this search it does not matter what order you enter your topic words. You can search for Ernest Hemingway or for Hemingway Ernest. The results will be the same.

Search Results Screen

These titles are shown in brief record view, 20 at a time. Go to the next page to see 20 more. A brief record shows basic information about the book, such as author, title, date, and call number.

On this first screen you see 20 book sources. While the book catalog is mainly a reference to books within the library's collection, it also serves a pointer to other types of sources such as articles from the CQ Researcher and Opposing Viewpoints databases. In a literature search however, you are not likely to find many results from these two databases, so we will concentrate on books for this discussion. In later sections of this handbook we use databases such as the Literature Resource Center, to find periodical articles about your topic.

With this Keywords Anywhere search, we found 121 results. Why so many? Look at the results on this page. Some of them are directly about Ernest Hemingway, others are more broad. Look at the first record on the list. The book is titled The Art of the Short Story. This book is not about Hemingway, but about short story writing. As a short story writer, Hemingway is included in this book, along with other short story writers, such as William Faulkner and Joseph Conrad. As another example, look at the book titled Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature. Let's click on the title to bring up the long record view.

Long Record View

In the long record view you see complete information about the book including publisher, contents and abstract. In the contents field for this book you see the keywords Ernest Hemingway highlighted in bold print. This book is about Edmund Wilson, not Ernest Hemingway; but from the contents field, we learn that Edmund Wilson was a champion, or supporter of Ernest Hemingway. Thus, the book is probably of limited use in our research.

There are two ways to make the keyword search more useful and narrow your search results. One way is to limit your search on Ernest Hemingway by making it a phrase search. Do that by adding quotation marks around the keywords.

This time the two words will appear together. This time when we search, we find 63 results instead of 121.

Another way to narrow the keyword search is to add words. When we add the word existentialism to our Ernest Hemingway search we come up with one result instead of the 121 for Ernest Hemingway alone. This search is definitely more focused; however, we have also eliminated several useful books from the previous search.

Basic 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 Ernest Hemingway, we find a long list of book titles for which these are the first two words in the title. These include: Ernest Hemingway; a Collection of Criticism, Ernest Hemingway, a Comprehensive Bibliography, and Ernest Hemingway: a Documentary Volume. 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 Ernest Hemingway search using Title Keywords, we find a list of 37 results.

This time books were found if they had the words Ernest Hemingway anywhere in the title, not just as the first two words of the title. As an example, #5 is a book titled A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. The phrase Ernest Hemingway appears in the title, but the first three words of the title are A Historical Guide. 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 Ernest Hemingway. 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.

Basic 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 any author with the last name Hemingway.

We find six authors named Hemingway: Collins Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway, Gregory H. Hemingway, Mariel Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway, and Valerie Hemingway. There is also an entry for the Hemingway Society, as well as a misspelled entry for Ernest Hemingway (Hemingwei), with a see reference to the correct spelling.

Basic 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 Hemingway Ernest we find a list of subject headings, each starting with the words Hemingway, Ernest, (1899-1961). 

The first subject heading in the list is Hemingway, Ernest. If we click on that subject heading, we find 22 books.

The next subject heading is Hemingway, Ernest (1899-1961) - Bibliography. 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 Hemingway, Ernest include: Biography, Characters, Correspondence, and Criticism and Interpretation. 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 81 results. This time instead of subdivisions we see a list of titles arranged in order by date.

Full Record View
Lets look at the long record view for the book titled Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways. 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.

MLA Citation
Here is an example of an MLA citation for a book found using the book catalog.

Hemingway, Valerie. Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways. New York: Ballantine, 2004.