 |
 |
|
|
|||||||||
Welcome, Durham Technical
Community College Distance Education Students! |
|||||
How can I get a library card?
|
Can you give me some tips and advanced
strategies for database searching? How do I cite sources in my research paper? Where do I find help using blackboard? How can I contact the library for further assistance? |
||||
| How do I get a library card? | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Durham Technical Community College distance education students
who are not taking any courses on campus may fill out an online
form. We will use your Durham Tech ID number (your Colleague number)
to verify your information and distance education status. Then we will
create a patron account for you in our records and mail a Durham Tech
library card to you at the address you have provided for us. The barcode
on the back of your library card is your library user ID. If you come to campus and get a Durham Tech ID card, you may also bring your ID card here to the library and we can put you into our library system immediately, placing the library barcode on the back of your Durham Tech ID. |
|||||
| How do I borrow and return books? | |||||
You can borrow materials from this library or from other
community college libraries in person using your Durham Tech library
card. If you are taking Durham Tech distance education courses exclusively
(in other words if you are taking no courses that require you to be
on campus at any time), at your
request we will be happy to check out books from our library (limit
2 at the time) to you and send them to you in the mail. This service
is only available to distance education only students, and we reserve
the right to verify your status. Please note that reserve items cannot
be checked out this way—reserve materials may only be used in
the library. You can also obtain books from other libraries via interlibrary
loan. There is usually no charge for
this; however, if you wish us to obtain articles or other materials
for which other libraries do charge us a fee, any such fees will be
passed on to you.
|
|||||
| How can I search the library catalog (CCLINC)? | |||||
| CCLINC is a shared catalog linking
most of North Carolina's community college libraries together. |
|||||
| Access: | |||||
| From the Durham Tech Library web page, select the link for
Durham
Tech Online Catalog. To see what materials are held by our library,
make sure that “Durham” is selected in the library search
box. You may also select “Durham—North” or “Durham—Chapel
Hill” to search the collections of the libraries at the Northern
Durham and Orange Skills Development Center satellite branches of Durham
Tech. |
|||||
| How to Search: | |||||
| Type the terms you are looking for inside the search box.
Then select the kind of search that you would like to conduct from these
choices: search by “words or phrase” (this searches everything),
“author”, “title”, “subject”, or “series”.
Please note that at this time Durham Tech’s periodical holdings
(journals and magazines) are not listed in our library catalog. To confirm
if our library owns print copies of a particular periodical, please contact
us. |
|||||
| General catalog searching tips: | |||||
| With all searches, correct spelling is very important (a
misspelled name or subject will probably result in no hits or the wrong
hits!), but using either upper or lower case letters should not matter.
Your results will appear reverse chronological order (the most recently
published materials appearing first) in groups of 20 individual hits on
each page. Each item should have an individual call
number at the top—our books are shelved from A to Z using this
system, so it’s important to keep track of this number in order
to find material here in the library. Items that are designated as “Reference
Material” cannot be checked out. Look for the words “copy
available” to see if an item is on the shelf; “estimated wait”
means an item is already checked out. If you need help searching, contact
us. |
|||||
| To search by Author: | |||||
| Type the first name and last name or the last name followed
by a comma and then the first name. Example: Maya Angelou Example: Steinbeck, John |
|||||
| To search by Title: | |||||
| Type as much of the title as you know. Example: To Kill a Mockingbird Example: Scribner Handbook for Writers |
|||||
| To search by Subject: | |||||
| Type the subject as it appears exactly in the Library of
Congress Subject Headings list. This is a controlled vocabulary and terms
must match the specific LC term. Example: Capital Punishment Example: Sociology |
|||||
| Search using Words or Phrase (Keyword): | |||||
| Type any words and they will be searched from the entire
record such as the title, content notes, organization name, etc. This
type of search casts the broadest possible net for your search---best
when you want to find as much as possible. Example: gun control Example: cloning Also, keywords can be combined, using the word AND to include both terms or using the word OR to include either term. Example: women AND military Example: World War II OR holocaust |
|||||
| Search by Series: | |||||
| Type the series name you are looking for. You must already
know the name of the series you want for this to work best! Example: Opposing
Viewpoints |
|||||
| Searching other Libraries' holding: | |||||
| To the right of the search box, there is another box from
which you can select the library you want to search. You can change this
from Durham to search another library or all libraries at once by selecting
ALL from the top of the menu. |
|||||
| What books are available electronically? | |||||
| Electronic books are available through two resources: The NetLibrary collection from NC Live, which offers an extensive collection of fulltext e-books and eAudiobooks The Gale Virtual Reference Collection from NC LIVE, a searchable collection of e-book reference titles. From off campus, both of these resources require the NC LIVE password. Please email us for this semester’s password. |
|||||
| How do I search the library’s electronic databases? | |||||
| What databases are available at Durham Tech? | |||||
| All the databases available to Durham Tech students are
listed on the library database page.
|
|||||
| How can I access these databases remotely? | |||||
| Databases that can be accessed from off campus require
a password and sometimes a username. Unfortunately, our vendors, such
as NC LIVE, do not allow public access to their passwords so we are unable
to post them on the library web site. Any Durham Tech student, staff,
or faculty member can contact
us to obtain these passwords. |
|||||
| Are all databases available from off campus? | |||||
| No. The JSTOR databases are not available from off campus
because we do not have a proxy server that allows this. Also, the legal
databases are not uniformly available. Unless you are in our paralegal
program, Westlaw can only be used on our campus (library staff cannot
give out the password, but must log users in). In addition, Lexis-Nexis
is restricted to use by students in the paralegal program only. |
|||||
| How can I search several databases at once on NC LIVE? | |||||
First, select the NC LIVE home page from the database
home page. Then select a heading under BROWSE BY SUBJECT or BROWSE
BY TYPE on the left hand side of the page. This will show you specific
NC LIVE databases more closely related to your research.--for example,
under GENERAL, one database shown is Academic Search Premier. Select
a database—under the “find” search box is a box that
says “in” and has the name of the database. If you scroll
down in this box, you will see other databases listed---check the box
beside them to include them in your search.
|
|||||
| Can you give me some tips and advanced strategies for database searching? | |||||
| KEYWORDS | |||||
| Keywords are the important terms, concepts, or ideas that
are identified as search terms. example: You are seeking information on stem cell research and the controversy surrounding this issue. keywords: stem cells and controversy example: You are interested in finding out about possible treatment options for pediatric AIDS. keywords: pediatric and treatment and (AIDS or HIV) |
|||||
| BOOLEAN OPERATORS | |||||
| What are Boolean operators? The Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT tell computer databases and search engines which way to conduct searches that best suit user's needs. |
|||||
| The AND operator | |||||
| You can specify that terms must appear in the items you
retrieve by using the AND operator. (It's best to capitalize Boolean operators
because some search engines require this). For example: gender AND crime Each of the above search statements will find documents containing both terms, gender and crime.You can use the AND operator more than once in a search. For example: gender AND crime AND poverty |
|||||
| The OR operator | |||||
| Using the OR operator states a preference that either or
both of your search terms appear in your results. For example: college OR university Both of the above search statements will retrieve documents with either the term college or university or both terms, college and university. You can use the OR operator more than once in a search. For example: college OR university OR higher education |
|||||
| The NOT operator | |||||
| The NOT operator forbids the word after it from appearing
in the items resulting from your search. For example: Mexico NOT New Mexico Both of the above search statements will retrieve documents containing the term Mexico but not containing the term New Mexico. |
|||||
| TRUNCATION | |||||
| Truncation is a method of including all the possible ending
forms of a word through the use of a symbol. It is an effective tool for
expanding a search that has retrieved too few results. For example, consider
the word environment, which has several possible variations. To truncate
this word, type the word environment followed by the appropriate truncation
symbol for the particular database: environment* These are some of the terms that will be searched: environmental environmentalism environmentalist environmentally environments Various symbols are used for truncation, depending on the database you are searching. In the library databases, MasterFile Premier and InfoTrac, for example, the truncation symbol (sometimes referred to as a wildcard symbol) is an *. In other databases it may be a $ sign, a # mark, or even a + sign. Read the database help information to find out which symbol is used to indicate truncation, and how it can be applied. sample search in InfoTrac Expanded Academic Index: comput* compute computer computers computing computed |
|||||
| INTERNAL TRUNCATION | |||||
| A symbol within a word provides for all possible variants
inside a word or word stem. The most commonly used symbol for internal
truncation is ? or #. For example, a search for wom?n will retrieve both
woman and women. |
|||||
| PARENTHESES OR NESTING | |||||
| Use parentheses to clarify relationships between search
terms when using the OR operator. For example: (television OR mass media) AND violencecombines "violence" with either "television" or "mass media". (jam OR preserves OR jelly) and recipecombines "recipe" with either "jam" or "jelly" or "preserves" |
|||||
| Select keywords to use for your search based on important concepts or questions in your research. Then construct searches using Boolean operators and truncation when possible. | |||||
| Examples of using keywords, Boolean operators, and truncation:
|
|||||
| How do I cite sources in my research paper? | |||||
| The following links to PDF files offer many examples for
how to cite print and online sources in MLA format
and in APA format. Both of these are online
versions of booklets created by Durham Tech library staff and require
no password to use.
For help organizing your citation information, you can also try using one of the many citation style makers on the internet, such as this one from the library at Calvin College, Michigan. When in doubt about how exactly a work should be cited, although you
are welcome to ask us for
our opinions, it is always best to consult your instructor directly—remember
it is your instructor who will be grading your work! |
|||||
| Where do I find help using Blackboard? | |||||
| Beginning in fall semester 2007, our Blackboard system is
making a number of changes—you will be using the Blackboard 7 system,
and the former Blackboard 6 system will no longer be available. Help is
available at http://courses.durhamtech.edu/wiki/index.php/Blackboard_7_Help_for_Students.
For additional technical assistance, you can contact
Durham Technical Community College’s Instructional Computing Team. |
|||||
| How can I contact the library for further assistance? | |||||
| Getting in touch with us is easy!
Email us at: library@durhamtech.edu
|
|||||
|
|||||||||
|
Durham Technical Community College Copyright
©Durham Technical Community College. All Rights Reserved. |