Library Orientation for Distance Learning
Introduction to the West Valley Online Catalog
The West Valley online catalog is the primary research tool to access books, videos, and sound recordings at West Valley College. You may also access books from Mission College and request that they be sent to WV.
Access the Online Catalog by going to the Library’s home page at http://wvclibrary.info . Click on Library Catalog on the far right of your screen.
The search default is set to searching keywords, but as you can see, you can also search by Author, Title, and several other access points.
Searching by KEYWORD looks for your term(s) anywhere in the library record including the title, author, publisher, subject area, table of contents and note fields As an example, I searched the phrase “rights of animals” to see what would appear:
Notice that I searched “rights of animals” in quotes. Use quotes if you want to search on a particular phrase. Otherwise use the words “and” or “or” to focus your search. The catalog is different than searching the web.
The results screen only gave me 3 titles:
Clicking on the second title, displays an actual record of a book. The first piece of information is the title, author or editor and the publication information:
The next piece of the record indicates where the book is located, the call number (where to find it on the shelf) and whether it is available or checked out to someone else:
The
remainder of the record may give you a table of contents with your keywords
marked in red.
It will also display the subjects assigned to the book by the Library of
Congress. These subjects will allow
you to other find relevant books on the topic:
Viewing the subjects gives you the opportunity to search the collection using these standardized terms with the potential to lead to more relevant material. Clicking on “Animal Rights” reveals a list of subjects, with “Animal rights” highlighted on the screen:
Notice the number at the far right of the chart above. There are 26 titles using Animal Rights as a Subject. Compare this result to the first search where only 3 titles were found searching “rights of animals” as a phrase.
The Library recommends that you begin your searches using the KEYWORD search, review the initial round of titles, and then once you find a relevant title, look at the subjects assigned to that particular book. In most cases this technique will help you to pinpoint the books that are the most relevant to your topic.
If at first you do not succeed in finding information, don’t despair. Research involves trial and error and as you begin your quest to find information, you must be creative in your search strategies. If one keyword or phrase results in a lack of relevant titles, you must think of synonyms and phrases close to the meaning of the original keyword or phrase. For instance, other possibilities for “rights of animals” could be “animal welfare” or “humane treatment of animals” or “animal experimentation”.
Books can be borrowed from other libraries. Mission College books can be requested by clicking the “REQUEST” button:
It will take approximately two business days to arrive at West Valley and can be picked up at the Check-out Desk.
Books unavailable at WV or Mission may be found using LINK+. This is a consortium of over 30 academic and public libraries in California and Nevada that have joined together to create one very large collection. As a registered student, you are eligible to borrow books from other libraries once you find them in the LINK+ catalog.
Let’s say you are looking for a particular title, but neither WV nor Mission own the book. After searching the WV catalog, the you have the option of searching the LINK+ catalog to determine whether the title is available elsewhere:
No matches were found with the search above. Clicking on “Search LINK+” in the top right-hand corner of the screen will bring you to a separate catalog where you can see what other libraries have the book:
The record shows that 9 libraries own this title. Click on “9 libraries have this item” to determine its availability. If it is available, click on “REQUEST THIS ITEM” to borrow it. You must have your student ID available to be able to borrow the book. Fill in the form with your name, ID and where you want the book sent, and it should arrive at the WV Library in three business days. Once it arrives, it will be on the HOLD shelf behind the Check-out Desk
This is a good example of why you should begin collecting information for your papers and projects as soon as they are assigned. If a particular book you require is at another library, you are able to retrieve them early on so that they are handy once you start your research.
Besides books, many of you will require access to full-text articles from magazines, journals and newspapers. Literary criticism, recent reports and findings that are not available in book form are also available to you. The Easy Access Page is the best place to start for finding this type of information.
Go to the library home page at http://wvclibrary.info . The Easy Access Page is the gold colored square close to the top of the page. Click on it. It should bring you to a gold colored page. Click the box on the right of the page titled “Search Full-text Electronic Resources.” You should then see a page that looks like this:
Note: If you are searching these resources from a computer OFF CAMPUS, you will be requested to type in your name and Student ID after clicking on any of the above resources.
Proquest
contains full-text articles from over 3500 journals, newspapers and magazines.
This is the best place to start a search for articles. Starting in Basic
Search, type a keyword or phase. The system assumes that two words are to be
searched as a phrase. It is not like Google! It does not automatically AND your terms together.
The library recommends that you review the SEARCH TIPS tool before doing any searching that includes more than one concept. It will save you a lot of time and frustration and takes less than 2 minutes to review. It is time well spent!
The “animal rights” search in Proquest lists articles where the term appears in the title or abstract. It automatically presents the most recent articles first. Here are the first three articles listed:
Look at these results and notice that they are available in full-text. Clicking on either the full-text icon or the title will display the entire article. After viewing the article, you have the option of printing it or emailing it.
Notice the tabs above the results. “All Sources” is currently highlighted. If you wanted to just look at scholarly articles, simple click on the next tab, “Scholarly Journals”:
By the way, what is a scholarly article? Also called academic articles or peer-reviewed articles, they are mainly written by academics and researchers that are experts in a particular field. The articles will be highly focused and may use vocabulary specific to the subject discipline, also known as jargon. The articles are published in peer-reviewed journals which means that fellow “peers” or colleagues sit on the editorial board of the journal and review the article then decide whether they want to print it. Scholarly articles usually have references at the end of the article.
Let’s say you were getting irrelevant hits searching “animal rights” and what you were really looking for was the issue of testing animals in laboratories, but you didn’t know the best way to search this concept. Proquest offers the searcher Suggested Topics that may help you focus your search. Scroll to the bottom of your search results page to view the Suggested Topics. Clicking on one will result in a new list of articles that might be better suited to your topic:
You can see that the last topic in this list is “Animal rights movement AND Laboratory animals”. Proquest makes intelligent guesses as to what you might need by analyzing your keyword search.
Clicking on this link retrieves a new list of articles. Here is what an article looks like once you click to see the full-text:
There’s much more you can do with Proquest as far as searching, saving articles, printing out MLA bibliographies and the like. Come to the West Valley Library and talk to a reference librarian in person to show you all the possibilities!
This is the resource to find literary criticism and biographies on literary figures.
After clicking on GaleNet, click on the Contemporary Authors, etc. link, the first one on the page. The next screen will present you with several options to searching including author, title, nationality and genre:
In this example a search is conducted to find information on the works of African-American author Alice Walker. The next screen will display articles from a variety of sources depending on the popularity and extent of writings by the author.
Several types of articles appear: biographies, topics and criticisms as indicated in the far right column of the results page. If you get multiple hits as in this case, it is important to review the articles carefully to make sure you are reading the information on the right author. In the following results list, there are listed two biographies—one for an Alice Walker and another for Alice (Malsenior) Walker. Are these one in the same person? Only a spot check of each biography will tell you if it is the correct person.
Here
are two biographies for Alice Walker. Are they one in the same
person or two different
authors?
Clicking on the record for Alice Walker #1, I find that she is a British writer who died in 1982. Alice Walker #2, on the other hand, is the author of The Color Purple, and I find out a lot more about her in the biography including that The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1983.
Going down the list, I see that there are several criticisms of her work in different books and journals. Here is what a criticism looks like. Note that this is not the entire article but only the first few paragraphs:
GaleNet’s biographies and criticisms are essential tools for the English student. Whether you must find a criticism on a particular work, or write your own, this resource will give you a greater appreciation and understanding of the world’s greatest literature.
Facts.com is where you would turn if you wanted in-depth articles on a controversial topic or you need to find facts fast. Covering the last 60 years, this is the place to go for statistics, background on major historical events and people.
Let’s say you were looking for the Pulitzer prize winners from the last several years. Simply type in “Pulitzer prize” in the search box and see the results:
Notice on the search above that I did not have to put quotation marks around the search term for it to be searched as a phrase. I clicked on Search Help to determine that two words together are automatically searched as a phrase. You can also search by story date or by relevance. Here, I searched by relevance and the results you see on the right are very relevant!
Clicking on the first title, below is partial list of the Pulitzer Prize winners awarded in 2004:
In the above example, you wanted to find a quick fact. You can do the same sort of search for any number of topics.
Facts.com can also give you in-depth facts on an event or an issue. Here are the results of searching Gay Rights by date rather than relevance:
Here is the beginning of article number three in the list above:
Your eyes are drawn to the bullet points that directly link you to key sections of the article. Now, take a look at the left-hand side of the article. The titles under Sidebars, Related Articles and Key New Events link you to other articles on your topic. The power of Facts.com is its ability to pull up information related to your topic—even subjects you may not have even considered!
There are many more electronic resources available to you through the Easy Access Page at http://wvclibrary.info --too many to review here. The Library recommends that you peruse all the sources on the Easy Access Page as they will help you in English as well as other subject areas.
The librarians at West Valley will be happy to show you how to use these resources. We have dedicated terminals for these resources in the library. You can also call us during library hours at 408-741-2029 for assistance over the telephone. Good luck with your research!
Library Orientation for Distance Learning
Introduction to the West Valley Online Catalog
The West Valley online catalog is the primary research tool to access books, videos, and sound recordings at West Valley College. You may also access books from Mission College and request that they be sent to WV.
Access the Online Catalog by going to the Library’s home page at http://wvclibrary.info . Click on Library Catalog on the far right of your screen.
The search default is set to searching keywords, but as you can see, you can also search by Author, Title, and several other access points.
Searching by KEYWORD looks for your term(s) anywhere in the library record including the title, author, publisher, subject area, table of contents and note fields As an example, I searched the phrase “rights of animals” to see what would appear:
Notice that I searched “rights of animals” in quotes. Use quotes if you want to search on a particular phrase. Otherwise use the words “and” or “or” to focus your search. The catalog is different than searching the web.
The results screen only gave me 3 titles:
Clicking on the second title, displays an actual record of a book. The first piece of information is the title, author or editor and the publication information:
The next piece of the record indicates where the book is located, the call number (where to find it on the shelf) and whether it is available or checked out to someone else:
The
remainder of the record may give you a table of contents with your keywords
marked in red.
It will also display the subjects assigned to the book by the Library of
Congress. These subjects will allow
you to other find relevant books on the topic:
Viewing the subjects gives you the opportunity to search the collection using these standardized terms with the potential to lead to more relevant material. Clicking on “Animal Rights” reveals a list of subjects, with “Animal rights” highlighted on the screen:
Notice the number at the far right of the chart above. There are 26 titles using Animal Rights as a Subject. Compare this result to the first search where only 3 titles were found searching “rights of animals” as a phrase.
The Library recommends that you begin your searches using the KEYWORD search, review the initial round of titles, and then once you find a relevant title, look at the subjects assigned to that particular book. In most cases this technique will help you to pinpoint the books that are the most relevant to your topic.
If at first you do not succeed in finding information, don’t despair. Research involves trial and error and as you begin your quest to find information, you must be creative in your search strategies. If one keyword or phrase results in a lack of relevant titles, you must think of synonyms and phrases close to the meaning of the original keyword or phrase. For instance, other possibilities for “rights of animals” could be “animal welfare” or “humane treatment of animals” or “animal experimentation”.
Books can be borrowed from other libraries. Mission College books can be requested by clicking the “REQUEST” button:
It will take approximately two business days to arrive at West Valley and can be picked up at the Check-out Desk.
Books unavailable at WV or Mission may be found using LINK+. This is a consortium of over 30 academic and public libraries in California and Nevada that have joined together to create one very large collection. As a registered student, you are eligible to borrow books from other libraries once you find them in the LINK+ catalog.
Let’s say you are looking for a particular title, but neither WV nor Mission own the book. After searching the WV catalog, the you have the option of searching the LINK+ catalog to determine whether the title is available elsewhere:
No matches were found with the search above. Clicking on “Search LINK+” in the top right-hand corner of the screen will bring you to a separate catalog where you can see what other libraries have the book:
The record shows that 9 libraries own this title. Click on “9 libraries have this item” to determine its availability. If it is available, click on “REQUEST THIS ITEM” to borrow it. You must have your student ID available to be able to borrow the book. Fill in the form with your name, ID and where you want the book sent, and it should arrive at the WV Library in three business days. Once it arrives, it will be on the HOLD shelf behind the Check-out Desk
This is a good example of why you should begin collecting information for your papers and projects as soon as they are assigned. If a particular book you require is at another library, you are able to retrieve them early on so that they are handy once you start your research.
Besides books, many of you will require access to full-text articles from magazines, journals and newspapers. Literary criticism, recent reports and findings that are not available in book form are also available to you. The Easy Access Page is the best place to start for finding this type of information.
Go to the library home page at http://wvclibrary.info . The Easy Access Page is the gold colored square close to the top of the page. Click on it. It should bring you to a gold colored page. Click the box on the right of the page titled “Search Full-text Electronic Resources.” You should then see a page that looks like this:
Note: If you are searching these resources from a computer OFF CAMPUS, you will be requested to type in your name and Student ID after clicking on any of the above resources.
Proquest
contains full-text articles from over 3500 journals, newspapers and magazines.
This is the best place to start a search for articles. Starting in Basic
Search, type a keyword or phase. The system assumes that two words are to be
searched as a phrase. It is not like Google! It does not automatically AND your terms together.
The library recommends that you review the SEARCH TIPS tool before doing any searching that includes more than one concept. It will save you a lot of time and frustration and takes less than 2 minutes to review. It is time well spent!
The “animal rights” search in Proquest lists articles where the term appears in the title or abstract. It automatically presents the most recent articles first. Here are the first three articles listed:
Look at these results and notice that they are available in full-text. Clicking on either the full-text icon or the title will display the entire article. After viewing the article, you have the option of printing it or emailing it.
Notice the tabs above the results. “All Sources” is currently highlighted. If you wanted to just look at scholarly articles, simple click on the next tab, “Scholarly Journals”:
By the way, what is a scholarly article? Also called academic articles or peer-reviewed articles, they are mainly written by academics and researchers that are experts in a particular field. The articles will be highly focused and may use vocabulary specific to the subject discipline, also known as jargon. The articles are published in peer-reviewed journals which means that fellow “peers” or colleagues sit on the editorial board of the journal and review the article then decide whether they want to print it. Scholarly articles usually have references at the end of the article.
Let’s say you were getting irrelevant hits searching “animal rights” and what you were really looking for was the issue of testing animals in laboratories, but you didn’t know the best way to search this concept. Proquest offers the searcher Suggested Topics that may help you focus your search. Scroll to the bottom of your search results page to view the Suggested Topics. Clicking on one will result in a new list of articles that might be better suited to your topic:
You can see that the last topic in this list is “Animal rights movement AND Laboratory animals”. Proquest makes intelligent guesses as to what you might need by analyzing your keyword search.
Clicking on this link retrieves a new list of articles. Here is what an article looks like once you click to see the full-text:
There’s much more you can do with Proquest as far as searching, saving articles, printing out MLA bibliographies and the like. Come to the West Valley Library and talk to a reference librarian in person to show you all the possibilities!
This is the resource to find literary criticism and biographies on literary figures.
After clicking on GaleNet, click on the Contemporary Authors, etc. link, the first one on the page. The next screen will present you with several options to searching including author, title, nationality and genre:
In this example a search is conducted to find information on the works of African-American author Alice Walker. The next screen will display articles from a variety of sources depending on the popularity and extent of writings by the author.
Several types of articles appear: biographies, topics and criticisms as indicated in the far right column of the results page. If you get multiple hits as in this case, it is important to review the articles carefully to make sure you are reading the information on the right author. In the following results list, there are listed two biographies—one for an Alice Walker and another for Alice (Malsenior) Walker. Are these one in the same person? Only a spot check of each biography will tell you if it is the correct person.
Here
are two biographies for Alice Walker. Are they one in the same
person or two different
authors?
Clicking on the record for Alice Walker #1, I find that she is a British writer who died in 1982. Alice Walker #2, on the other hand, is the author of The Color Purple, and I find out a lot more about her in the biography including that The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1983.
Going down the list, I see that there are several criticisms of her work in different books and journals. Here is what a criticism looks like. Note that this is not the entire article but only the first few paragraphs:
GaleNet’s biographies and criticisms are essential tools for the English student. Whether you must find a criticism on a particular work, or write your own, this resource will give you a greater appreciation and understanding of the world’s greatest literature.
Facts.com is where you would turn if you wanted in-depth articles on a controversial topic or you need to find facts fast. Covering the last 60 years, this is the place to go for statistics, background on major historical events and people.
Let’s say you were looking for the Pulitzer prize winners from the last several years. Simply type in “Pulitzer prize” in the search box and see the results:
Notice on the search above that I did not have to put quotation marks around the search term for it to be searched as a phrase. I clicked on Search Help to determine that two words together are automatically searched as a phrase. You can also search by story date or by relevance. Here, I searched by relevance and the results you see on the right are very relevant!
Clicking on the first title, below is partial list of the Pulitzer Prize winners awarded in 2004:
In the above example, you wanted to find a quick fact. You can do the same sort of search for any number of topics.
Facts.com can also give you in-depth facts on an event or an issue. Here are the results of searching Gay Rights by date rather than relevance:
Here is the beginning of article number three in the list above:
Your eyes are drawn to the bullet points that directly link you to key sections of the article. Now, take a look at the left-hand side of the article. The titles under Sidebars, Related Articles and Key New Events link you to other articles on your topic. The power of Facts.com is its ability to pull up information related to your topic—even subjects you may not have even considered!
There are many more electronic resources available to you through the Easy Access Page at http://wvclibrary.info --too many to review here. The Library recommends that you peruse all the sources on the Easy Access Page as they will help you in English as well as other subject areas.
The librarians at West Valley will be happy to show you how to use these resources. We have dedicated terminals for these resources in the library. You can also call us during library hours at 408-741-2029 for assistance over the telephone. Good luck with your research!