Log into Moodle and go to the Item Access Quiz. You will be given images or verbal descriptions of the citations that a "patron" brings to you at the desk. For each item, describe what you would tell the patron, including answers to each of the following questions:
Note, these will be manually graved by your mentors, so there will not be immediate feedback.
If you need a review, below are the tutorials shared last semester on how to search a known item.
DUE February 8th
HEADS UP - since you all share a computer, there may be an issue of Moodle staying logged in under a different student's name after they have left. Make sure that you are correctly logged into Moodle under your name.
We all get rusty, so here's a chance to get old school again and practice locating print periodical articles in the collection! Each of you is assigned two citations, one in a print bound journal and one in microfiche. Locate the articles and copy/print the first page of each article. Turn them in to your mentor in print or upload them to the Moodle Assignment.
Andrea - Boraiko, Allen A. “A Splendid Light: Lasers.” National Geographic 165 (March 1984): 334–63.
Borrus, Amy. “Tokyo Unveils This Year’s ‘Buy American’ Plan.” Business Week 15 Jan. 1990: 38–39. Print.
Ismael - Butler, Michael J. A. “Plight of the Bluefin Tuna.” National Geographic 162 (August 1982): 220–39.
Zoe - Cochran, Doris Mabel. “Our Snake Friends and Foes.” National Geographic 106 (September 1954): 334–64.
Beyond the basic searches that you practiced in the previous exercise, here are some of the challenges that might come up when looking for a known item.
1. The patron missed that it was an ebook - sometimes patrons will go looking for a book on the shelf, when in reality the book is only available as an electronic book. Suggestion: Look up the book again in PRIMO, either by call number or title and show the patron the link to the ebook. If they seem disappointed and want a print copy, you can usually find a print version through MeLCat or WorldCat if we don't have it here.
2. The item is not available - If a patron comes to you with an item they were unable to find in the stacks, always look the item up again in PRIMO, by Call Number or Title, to verify the location, call number, and availability. If the Availability says any of the following, you will not find it on the shelf:
3. The patron wrote down the call number incorrectly - If when you type in a provided call number nothing comes up, then the patron likely wrote the number down incorrectly. See if you can get the patron to recall the title and/or author of the book, or recreate the search they did to find it so that you can track down the correct call number.
4. The patron doesn't remember the citation correctly - Sometimes the patron doesn't have complete or correct information about the item they need. I even had an example recently where the professor wrote the title incorrectly in their syllabus! There is where Google is your friend. Use online searching to try to come up with a complete and correct citation for the item they need. Then take this information to PRIMO to check and see if we have it.
5. The location is a less common one - The items may be in an odder location in our outside of Van Wylen. Here are some that come up regularly:
6. The item is missing - If after you have followed the above suggestions you are not finding the item where you expect to, it may be legitimately missing. Take the student to the circulation desk and have them fill out a missing item form, and the circulation students will begin searching for it. Suggest that in the meantime they student could order it through MeLCat or WorldCat or use an alternate item.
7. The item is a shorter work that may be located in a larger anthology - This comes up more frequently in the arts, when someone is looking for a play or a score for a piece of music. It also may be an issue if someone needs an essay published in an anthology.
8. We don't own the item they need - If after verifying that the citation information is correct, you may find that we don't have the item in our library. At this point, if they have a little time to wait, you can show them how to order the item through MeLCat or WorldCat.
Students often ask us for help locating the full texts of articles, and this is one of the more complicated questions to answer, as our journal collections exist in multiple electronic packages, as well as various print formats.
Instructions
When a student brings you a journal citation, it will look something like this and include the following information:
Sometimes, students will bring you a handwritten partial citation without all of the information. You will need all of this information to find the right article, so ask the student where they found it, or use Google figure out the complete citation.
Unlike a search on a topic, a search for a citation always starts through the library tool called the Journals List. It is the 5th tab on the main research area on the library home page.
Use this tool to search for the title of the Journal that the article is published in (not the article itself!).
Tips: 1. this search engine is unforgiving, so make sure you don't have any typos.
2. If the journal title you have is abbreviated and you can't figure it out, JABBR is a good tool to use to decipher it, or ask a librarian
The results will tell you if we have coverage of that journal, and what dates we have coverage for. Sometimes we will have more than one electronic collection that includes this title. Compare these to the date for the citation and select an appropriate one. If you don't see coverage of the date you need, look for the link that says "Hope College/WTS Journal Holdings" as this might mean that we have coverage in print as well.
If it looks like we have coverage for the date that you need, select one of the electronic resources that provides it. Once inside the resource, you will either see a browsable list of issues, from which you can browse your way to the article you need, or you may spot a search box where you can type in part of the article title to bring up the full text.
Exceptions
If you don't see electronic coverage for the title you need, look to see if there is a link for "Hope College/WTS Journal Holdings." This shows that we may have print coverage for that article, either in print or on microform. Clicking the link will take you into HopeCat, and you will see a screen something like this:
Again, compare the coverage dates to the date of the article you need and see if they overlap.