WELCOME TO THE J.F. DRAKE MEMORIAL LEARNING RESOURCES CENTER

YOUR SECRET TO SUCCESS AT

ALABAMA A&M UNIVERSITY

The Learning Resources Center provides resources and services to its faculty, staff, students, and the community through a central facility located in the heart of the campus.

The hours of operation for the Learning Resources Center during the Fall and Spring Semesters are as follows:

Monday - Thursday 8:00 a.m. – 11:00 p.m. Friday 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Sunday 1:00 p.m. –10:00

p.m.

The LRC Webpage is accessible through a link on the University Homepage.

2nd floor

Circulation ReferenceInterlibrary LoanGovernment DocumentsSerialsLRC Administration

THE INFORMATION COMMONS

The Information Commons, located in the Reference Department on the 2nd floor, provides a variety of electronic resources to assist the University community with its information needs, including access to over 55 academic databases.

Reference provides essential services such as LRC Instruction classes such as Orientation, Basic and Advanced Searching.

A copier is located in this department behind the Reference Desk. Copies, as well as print outs from the Information Commons, are 10c per page. These print outs are available from the Reference Desk. Please bring change or single bills for these services.

REFERENCE

SERIALS

The Serials Department, located on the second floor of the LRC, houses current serial titles, bound volumes, newspapers and microforms.

Periodicals are non-circulating and must remain in the confines of the reading room, however for convenience, a copy machine and microform reader-printers are available for duplicating materials.

This is the J.F. Drake Memorial Learning Resources Center. Drake Hall is across the street from Thigpin Hall.

The Information Commons is provided as a research area for the Electronic Resources and Catalog.

The computer lab, located on the first floor, is run by the Campus I.T. Department. It is available for office applications, email, chat, Facebook or other web related activities.

The Multipurpose Room, Multimedia Lab and 3 classrooms are on the first floor, to the right, after you enter the lobby.

Please turn your cell phones to vibrate and answer or make calls in the first floor lobby. This includes using your Bluetooth Headsets for conversations.

Food and drink are limited to the student lounge on the first floor. This helps keep the building clean and pest free. You will be asked to discard food or drinks if found in other areas.

Study rooms are available on the second and third floors. Again, no food or drinks are allowed. There are wall plugs in the rooms for your laptops. Please share the space with another if you are studying alone. Groups, please be mindful of the volume of your conversations.

Copiers are available in Reference, Serials and in the 1st Floor Computer Lab.Restrooms are located on all 3 floors.

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REMOTE ACCESS

ACCESSING THE LRC DATABASESFROM THE AAMU HOMEPAGE OR LRC HOMEPAGE, CHOOSE THE DATABASES LINK OR THE LINK TO AMCAT, OUR LRC CATALOG.

CHOOSE YOUR SUBJECT AREA. SELECT A DATABASE AND BEGIN YOUR SEARCH.

AMCAT: USE AMCAT TO SEARCH THE LRC CATALOG FOR BOOKS, JOURNALS AND OTHER MATERIALS. ARTICLES ARE FOUND IN DATABASES.

The American Library Association's (ALA) Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, Final Report states, "To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.”

You start by determining what you need.

You must decide what your paper is going to be about.

Then, you must THINK about what you want to say and how you are going to find the right information.

Then you may have to rethink your thesis…be prepared to change directions. In this part of the presentation we will talk about using databases.

What is a database?A database is a collection of data stored on a computer. A database may provide access to all or some of following types of documents:

Journal articles Reports Conference papers Books Chapters of books Published and unpublished papers

The LRC subscribes to a range of subject related and multidisciplinary databases.

Analyzing a topic and listing keywords or subject terms:

To develop a search strategy, identify the key concepts or ideas contained in your topic.

Concept 1Concept 1FOODFOOD

Concept 2Concept 2CHILDRENCHILDREN

Concept 3Concept 3BEHAVIOURBEHAVIOUR

hungerhungerdietdietsugarsugarchocolate chocolate

infantsinfantsgirls/boysgirls/boysadolescentsadolescents

hyperactivityhyperactivityanxietyanxietydepressiondepressionlethargylethargy

Example question:

Does a certain food intake affect children's behavior.

What are the main concepts contained in this question?

Concept 1: Food

Concept 2: Children

Concept 3: Behavior

List alternative keywords for each concept. These additional terms may be more specific or more general alternatives.

Adapting the searchNarrowing

If you are retrieving too many articles, focus your search by adding terms, limiting terms to particular fields, or by limiting your searches.

ExpandingIf you are retrieving too few articles, expand your search by removing terms or searching for terms in keywords or full-text.

Be Flexible Above all, be flexible in your searching. If one term doesn't work,

try a different one. There will never be one perfect search for your topic. It may take dozens of searches to retrieve all the necessary information.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REINVENT THE WHEEL: USE THE RESOURCES OTHER HAVE LEFT FOR YOU!

Databases provide access to high quality, up-to-date information from respected publishers and publications.They provide sophisticated search capabilities and access, in many instances, to online full-text articles.

You’re probably wondering why you can’t just surf the net for research:

REMEMBER DATABASES ARE RESEARCH RESOURCES DELIVERED VIA INTERNET ACCESS,

BUT THEY ARE NOT INTERNET RESOURCES.

WIKIPEDIA IS AN INTERNET RESOURCE; IT IS NOT CONSIDERED RELIABLE BY MOST FACULTY AND SCHOLARS.

THE LIBRARIANS INDEX TO THE INTERNET (lii.org) IS A RELIABLE INTERNET RESOURCE.

BUT MY INSTRUCTOR SAID I CAN’T USE MORE THAN ONE INTERNET RESOURCE…

There are two types of databases to be aware of:

Citation or Bibliographic

You will not get the full text of the article from a citation or bibliographic database.

You may get an abstract which details what the article is about.

Full-textIn a full-text database you will always see a link or an icon pointing you to the full article. You will get the full citation to the article and perhaps an abstract also.

What your results will include and how to read the citations:

Information in a database is organized by records. These records contain the following fields. Article or chapter title Author of article Journal or book title Volume number (Vol. No.) and issue number Date of publication Page numbers Abstract Full text of the article (for full text databases) Subject terms

Magazine or Journal Articles are also known as periodical articles. They are considered popular or general materials.

Journals or periodicals are continuous publications, usually published at regular intervals, e.g. monthly or annually. Periodical publications include: journals, newspapers, magazines and serials.

Peer-reviewed or refereed journal articles have been evaluated by subject experts prior to publishing. They are also referred to as “scholarly journals”.

OTHER RESEARCH CONCEPTS YOU WILL NEED TO KNOW:

AVOID PLAGIARISM

CITE YOUR SOURCES!

COPYING WITHOUT CITING IS PLAGIARISM.

PLAGIARISM EQUALS A FAILING GRADE AND POSSIBLE EXPULSION.

STILL A BIT CONFUSED OR

OVERWHELMED?

ASK A LIBRARIAN!!

Your Librarians specialize:

* in locating, securing and managing information, both in print and digitally

* teaching and assisting users to find information when they need it, which equals

* empowerment for you, our patrons.