Resource discovery by Dr. Sam Ang Sam

1 Resource Discovery
1.1 Physical Collection in the Library
1.1.1 Library Collection Management
1.1.2 Call Number
1.1.3 OPAC/Online Public Access Catalog
1.2 Electronic Collections
1.2.1 Jstor
1.2.2 Academic OneFile
1.3 Search Engines
1.4 Websites

 Now that you have a basic understanding of
the different kinds of resources, you will
need to know how to find the resources you
need to write your research paper.
 Resources are available in various forms and
you can find them on varied platforms.
 Some places you can look are libraries,
information centers, bookstores, article
databases, search engines, and the websites
of institutions.

 However, the PUC library should be the first
place that you go to check for resources.
 All of the PUC libraries have reference
librarians who can help you identify and
locate resources, particularly academic
resources.
 There are many different ways to access the
information you need in the PUC library.
Some of these are discussed below.

1.1 Physical Collections in the Library
 PUC libraries have many different printed or
physical resources organized into
collections, including books,
NGO/IO/government publications,
periodicals and audio-visual collections.
 These collections cover various subjects
from the humanities to natural sciences.
 In total, the PUC library has more than
40,000 items in its collection.

1.1.1 Library Collection Management
 If unorganized, the large amount of materials in
libraries would make it very difficult to find what
you need.
 Therefore, libraries are organized very carefully.
 The PUC libraries manage their collections by using
the Library of Congress Classification (LCC). LCC
was created to organize collections within the
Library of Congress of the United States.
 Later, it was used by academic libraries in the
United States and other libraries around the world.
LCC uses English letters and Arabic numerals to
represent the subjects of library collections.

 Here is a brief outline of LCC:
 A -- General works
 B -- Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
 C -- Auxiliary sciences of history
 D -- World history and history of Europe, Asia,
Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
 E -- History of the Americas
 F -- History of the Americas
 G -- Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
 H -- Social sciences
 J -- Political science

 L -- Education
 M -- Music and books on music
 N -- Fine arts
 P -- Language and literature
 Q -- Science
 R -- Medicine
 S -- Agriculture
 T -- Technology
 U -- Military science
 V -- Naval science
 Z -- Bibliography. Library science. Information
resources (general)

 Under each main subject letter, there are sub
subjects that are represented by a combination
of two letters and Arabic numerals.
 Here is an example:
 D - World history and history of Europe, Asia,
Africa, and Australia.
DS - History of Asia
DS 554.5 - Cambodia
 Libraries organize books and other resources by
categories so that is easier for people to find
what they are looking for.

1.1.2 Call Number
 Categories are not quite specific enough to keep
everything organized in libraries, so libraries also
use call numbers.
 You can think of a call number as the address of an
item in a library, just like you have an address for
your house in the city where you live.
 It shows where a particular book is located within
the library.
 Without call numbers, you would have difficulty
locating a book even if you knew the book was
available.
 Call numbers allow users to quickly and efficiently
find what they are looking for.

1.1.3 OPAC/Library Catalog
 Even though the system is organized according
to subjects and call numbers, searching through
40,000 different publications to find the one
you need would take a really long time.
 So how do you find the resource you need?
 How do you even know if the library has the
resource you are looking for?
 The answer is the library catalog, which keeps a
record of everything available in the library.
 The name of the library catalog that PUC uses is
called Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC).

 OPAC is accessible via the PUC library
website.
 Please note that OPAC is neither an article
databases nor e-library.
 It does not provide digital contents of books
or other library materials.
 It only gives you the citation of books and
library collections.
 Then you can use this information to find the
resource you need.

 The OPAC homepage on the PUC library
website.

 If you are using the library for the first time,
searching with OPAC might seem a little daunting.
Don’t worry.
 After you get the hang of it, it will be very easy and
helpful.
 You simply need to use keywords related to your
research topic to search for resources.
 Let’s try an example using the student’s topic from
Chapter 3: How is the international community
currently working together to stop the human-
activity that is causing global warming?
 One of the keywords identified was “global
warming.”
 You type this into the search bar and do a keyword
search.

 When searching “global warming,” the
catalog returned six results.
 The student would then look through the
results to see if anything would be helpful
for her research paper.
 Searching by a keyword is a broad way of
searching, and the catalog returned very few
results.
 This might mean the library doesn’t have
many materials on the topic, or at least not
using those specific words.

 Therefore, it is good to use a synonym of the
current search term as a new search term.
 This is where a thesaurus might be handy.
 A synonym of “global warming” is “climate
change.”
 So let’s try the search again using “climate
change.”

 Searching with the keywords “climate
change” produced 71 results.
 Some of these results may be helpful, but
many of them may not be.
 As you have noticed, the PUC main library
also houses the Climate Change Corner.
 Therefore, the catalog will retrieve all the
items in the Climate Change Corner when we
use “climate change” in a keyword search.

 The student may need more specific
resources.
 A keyword search is very broad. One way to
narrow down the search is to do a title
search.
 You can choose “title search” from the drop
down menu on the left side of the search
bar.

 When we limit our search to a title search,
we only get 41 results instead of 71.
 This is a much more manageable number of
sources to look through.
 Also, all of these results will be about
climate change because they have “climate
change” in their title.
 This is helpful because they will be more
relevant to the student’s research project.

Broaden Your Search
 Sometimes when you search, you may not be
satisfied with the results.
 If your search did not return many results,
you can look for more potential resources by
broadening your search term.
 For example, the topic of “global warming”
might be discussed under publications or in
textbooks about the environment.
 You can do a title search with the word
“environment.”

 When we use this approach, the catalog
retrieves resources with titles containing the
term “environment.”
 As you can see from the image above, our
libraries have 212 publications with titles
that contain the word “environment.”

Advanced Search: Title and Author
 In some cases, you might be looking for a
specific book by a specific author.
 Maybe your instructor has recommended you
use a specific book.
 In this case, you can search by author, or use an
advanced search that combines the title and
author fields.
 For example, when you place the term
“environment” into the Title Field, and the
author’s name, “Cunningham,” into the Author
Field, the library catalog retrieves six results.
 This type of search can help you find a specific
resource very quickly.

1.2 Electronic Collections
 In addition to the physical resources that you
find through OPAC, the PUC libraries have
access to millions of articles in electronic
collections.
 In fact, the PUC libraries give you access to
60 different databases.
 These databases cover a wide range of
subjects and include lots of online articles
for you to use in your research papers.
 Two of these databases, JSTOR and Academic
One File, will be introduced below.

1.2.1 Jstor
 One useful database is called Jstor.
 It provides access to 1500 academic journal
titles and covers subjects across disciplines.

Basic Search
 The first thing you might do to find resources
on JSTOR is a basic search.
 When you place “climate change” into the
basic search box, the database will retrieve
any documents that contain the words
“climate” and “change” or the phrase
“climate change.”

 If you put your basic search in quotation
marks, your search results will only find
articles that contain the exact phrase.
 This can be helpful to narrow down the
results and find articles that are most
relevant to your topic.
 Because this approach only retrieves the
documents that contain the exact phrase
“climate change,” the result is 59,000
articles instead of 297,000.

Basic Search – Boolean Operator (OR)
 You can also use Boolean Operators to help
make your search more specific.
 When we use the Boolean Operator, “OR,”
the database will retrieve documents that
contain the phrases “climate change,”
“global warming,” or both phrases.

Basic Search – Boolean Operator (AND)
 When using the Boolean operator, “AND,”
the database will retrieve any documents
that contain phrases, “climate change,” and
“human activities.”
 That means that articles only show up in the
results if they have both phrases.

Basic Search – Boolean Operators (NOT)
 You can also use the Boolean Operator, “NOT.”
 When we place the word “NOT,” before our
search term “nature,” it means that we want to
retrieve any documents that only contain the
phrase “climate change” and “human
activities,” and we want to exclude any
documents that contain these two phrases and
the word “nature.”
 This would help the student find articles about
climate change that only concern human
activities, not natural causes of climate change.

Advanced Search
 Sometimes basic searches are helpful, but
often they provide too many results.
 Therefore, librarians generally recommend
doing an advanced search.
 Advanced searches provide results that are
more relevant to students’ topics.

 On the Advanced Search platform of Jstor,
we can limit our search by specifying five
different fields: Full-Text, Author, Item Title,
Abstract, and Caption.
 In addition, we also can limit our search to
item types (Articles, Books, Pamphlets, and
Reviews), date of publication and languages.
 All of these search options help narrow down
results so that you only get the resources
that are relevant to your topic.

 For example, when we place the phrase
“climate change” into the Item Title, and
“human activities” into the Full-text, then
limit our search to Articles in the English
language, we receive around 390 results, as
shown in the image below.
 With a result of 390 titles, it is possible for
students to scan through the results and
select the ones that are most relevant to
their topic.

 When you know how to perform a basic
search and an advanced search using one
database, it will be easy for you to also use
other databases.
 Most databases are built with similar
functions and features.
 In the next section, another database,
Academic One file, will be introduced.

1.2.2 Academic OneFile
Academic OneFile provides access
to 40 million journal articles and
other resources on various topics,
from 1980 to present.
It has a few more features than
JSTOR.

 While Jstor provides only five options in the
search box, Academic OneFile provides 25
options.
 A special feature that you should also notice
is the option to select “peer-reviewed
publications.”
 Peer-reviewed publications are the most
credible type of resources, because before
being published, they are evaluated by other
scholars.

 The reason that this database offers this
option is because it contains resources from
various publication types, including scholarly
journals, magazines, newspapers,
conference proceedings and reports. All of
these publications are not peer-reviewed.
 Some instructors may require you to use at
least one of peer-review article.
 Therefore, you will need to limit your results
to peer-reviewed publications when you are
searching.

 In addition to JSTOR and Academic OneFile,
you can access many other databases on the
PUC library website.
 PUC has put a lot of effort into making PUC
libraries rich resource centers for students
to expand their knowledge and
understanding.
 Students should take advantage of these
databases to support their learning and
strengthen the quality of their academic
work.

1.3 Search Engines
 In addition to physical resources in the
library and resources you can find through
databases, you can also use Internet search
engines.
 There are several search engines, including
Bing, Dogpile, DuckDuckGo, Google, Yahoo,
and Yippy.
 Google is the most popular one in Cambodia.

 Students love Google.
 Why?
 They love it because they can get everything
at their fingertips without spending time to
go to a library.
 Unfortunately, Google and other search
engines do not provide extensive access to
scholarly resources.
 Most scholarly resources are copyrighted and
they are only available on commercial
databases.

 Users or libraries need to pay fees in order
to access scholarly work.
 As PUC students, you have the privilege of
accessing these commercial databases for
free, as discussed in the last section.
 So remember, if you are looking for scholarly
resources, go to the databases listed on PUC
library website first, not Google.

 However, Google and other search engines
can be useful sometimes, if students know
how to search correctly and evaluate the
materials they find carefully.
 If they do not know how to properly use and
evaluate information found through search
engines, they may get unreliable resources,
which damage the quality of their academic
work.

 One time that you might want to use Google
is when you are working on topics about
Cambodia.
 Cambodia has very few scholarly journals
and textbooks.
 Therefore, when doing research, students
have to rely on other resources such as
publications released by NGOs, IOs, or
government institutions.
 These resources can be retrieved via Google.

 Google has the capacity to reach trillions of
resources that are available in the public
domain.
 However, without proper searching
strategies, students might not be able to
find the resources they are looking for, even
if they are available somewhere.
 So it is important to know how to search.
Some key search tips to help you find
publications via Google are discussed below.

Definition
 When searching for definitions, students
should use the term “define” before the
word or phrase they are searching.
 For example, “define global warming.”

 Please note that the three results that
always appear at the top of your search
results may not really relate to your topic.
 They appear at the top because they pay
Google to promote their websites.

Keywords
 It is helpful to use keywords related to your
topic.
 For example, if you want to look for
materials on global warming caused by
humans, you just type “global warming
human cause” into the Google search box.
 By using this approach, Google will retrieve
any documents that talk about global
warming caused by humans or any
documents that contain these four words.

Quotation Marks
 You can use quotation marks when you want
to look for a specific phrase.
 Looking for a specific phrase helps narrow
down your search.

Web Page/Article Title
 When we use this approach, Google will
retrieve any documents that have titles
containing the words: global, warming,
human, cause.
 You simply add “intitle:” before your search
terms.

Website or Domain
 When you use the Internet, you may have
noticed domain names like .org, .edu, .gov,
or .com.
 Have you ever wondered what these mean?
These domain names tell you the type of
website you are visiting.
 The domain name .org is generally used for
non-profit organizations, .edu for
educational institutions, .gov for
governmental institutions, and .com is used
for for-profit organizations.

 If you want to look for materials only from
educational institutions, you can limit your
search to educational institutions. You
simply add “site:” and the domain name to
your search terms. The picture below shows
an example using our previous search,
“intitle: global warming human cause,” but
this time, we only want to see resources
available on educational institution sites, so
we add “site:.edu” to the search.

File Types: ppt, xls, doc, pdf
 You also can limit your search to specific types
of documents.
 For example, you may want to limit your search
to pdf files.
 To do this, you would add “:filetype” to the end
of your search.
 So if we want to search for articles on the
human causes of global warming on non-profit
websites (.org) that are in pdf form, here is how
it should be put into the search box: intitle:
“global warming” human cause site:.org
filetype:pdf

 By using this approach to specify file type, the
number of results is limited to around 2,000,
rather than 40,000,000.
 *Please note that when you practice these
search tips, the number of results might vary,
because more written texts are added to public
domains every day.
 The numbers used for the examples above were
taken from search retrievals on 25 November
2014.
 You can visit this link for more tips on Google
searching:
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer
/2466433?hl=en

Google Scholar (scholar.google.com)
 Unlike the general Google search engine,
Google Scholar can be helpful when you are
looking for scholarly information.
 It provides access to millions of citations of
scholarly resources on various subjects.
 This might be helpful to let you know what
kind of articles have been written about
your topic.

 Google Scholar also offers access to some
full-text articles, but not as many as the
research databases previously discussed.
 So after finding an article that might be
helpful for your academic assignment, you
could look for the full text version in a
research database.
 Further, Google Scholar provides information
on the number of works that cite a specific
resource.

1.4 Websites
 In addition to physical resources in the library,
electronic collections accessible through
research databases, and Internet search
engines, you can also access publications on
various websites.
 Several International Organizations, NGOs and
governmental organizations place their
publications online via their institutional
websites.
 Below is an example of the Food and Agriculture
Organization website where the organization
posts all of its publications.

 To help you find various websites, the PUC
library website has a web directory.
 It guides you to several institutional websites
that are grouped by subject.
 While resource discovery might seem a little
overwhelming because there are several
ways to go about it, once you get the hang
of it, you will be able to find good, reliable
resources to use in your academic work.
 If you need help with any of the sources or
techniques discussed in this chapter, you can
always ask your instructor or a librarian.

File: L5_resource_discovery.ppt
Date: 18/12/14
Running:

Resource discovery by Dr. Sam Ang Sam

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