Finding a circulating book

This blog is about finding a circulating book. To the untrained mind a circulating book could sound like a number of things. Maybe a book about circles is the first thought that comes to mind when one sees circulating book. In fact, the first time I saw circulating book, I assumed it was a book that moves in a circle. In more or less words, I was actually correct. To the trained mind, a circulating book is nothing more than a book that one would find in the library. It is nothing more, nothing less.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Circulating Book - A book that is circulating or "in circulation" is a book that is in a library and that can be checked out.

After I learned that a circulating book was a library book I found myself a little upset. I felt this way partly because I didn’t know what it meant, and also because we make things so difficult. Like seriously?  Why don’t we just refer to a book that can be found in a library a “Library Book”? So for my blog I am going to refer to it as a library book. Finding a library book is quite simple really. I would simple ask the librarian to find it for me. That is probably not the way you should go about it but it will get the job done. If the librarian cannot find the book or at least tell you it’s been checked out, she should probably be fired. In grades K-12 you are taught to use the Dewey Decimal system (which I NEVER learned). The advanced higher learning way of finding a library book is by using the Library of congress Classification System or LOC for short. Explaining how to use the LOC could possibly put me at 5 pages. Since I’m well over my short 250 word blog, I will say salutations. 

Okay so scratch the salutations, for i have misinformed you. A circulation book is indeed a library book, but there are many types of books in a library. As stated earlier, a reference book can also be fopund in a library. There is a key difference between the two. Unlike a reference book, a circulation book may be checked out to enjoy its reading inside it anywhere you please. And I guess that is why you would distinguish it a circulating book; Because it can get around.

Using Truncations, Synonyms and Limiters

Searching for an item in a database can be very difficult. These databases contain a number of different search options. Take a library database for instance. A single library can contain 4 different kinds of books, cd’s dvd’s, journals, tape recordings, newspaper articles, magazines, etc… And in this single library, there could be multiple thousands of each item. When you are electronically searching a single item, making minor mistakes can cost you the result that you time and proper results.. In short, you have to KNOW what you are doing when using databases. Knowing a few key terms will make your search a lot easier. These key terms are Synonyms, Truncations, and Limiters.

• Synonyms - A word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language
• Truncation - To shorten by or as if by cutting off
• Limiters - A person or thing that limits something, in particular

In the world cat database these terms (or actions), when used in a search correctly, can narrow your search down to the most useful of results.  Let’s say we are searching for books on Military. If you type in just army, a million hits will show. But if you type in Military or Army or Navy in a search, you will get hits with all of these synonyms in it. The truncation feature allows you to search all the forms of the word. When the trunk of history is typed in like this; histor*, the database will search history, historical, historically, and historic.

These few terms will make searching easy as taking candy from a baby, even though I hate that adage. Babies go hysterical when you take candy from them. There is nothing easy about taking candy from a baby. I guess that is a whole different blog topic.

InterLibrary Loaning

The biggest problem you hear with smack college towns is that on weekends when there isn’t anything to do, a small college town can get boring. Not just any type of boring, but unjustly, drive you insane type of boring. Kids that are on their way into higher learning will often ask, “What do college kids do for fun (when there isn’t a game or function to attend)?” I, being the upper echelon college student that I am, would answer simply, “Video games and/or movies.” Video games and movies are the savior of college students. I bet the average student spends 16 hours a week between the two. A college student will tell you he/she is piss poor. That couldn’t be any closer to the truth. We are indeed broke. So acquiring the newest video game or the latest dvd is probably not the most fiscally responsible choice for us financially struggling college kids. Thanks to this neat little trick I learned a couple weeks ago, acquiring these video games and dvd’s will not only be affordable, but it is free. This feature is called InterLibrary Loaning. InterLibrary Loaning allows you to rent books, cds, movies, videos games, or anything else you can find in a library for free. If the library you belong to doesn’t have what you need, the nearest library that owns a copy will ship it to your library for you to check it out. The steps are quite simple

• ·         Go to MSU libraries
• ·         Quicklinks to ILLAD
• ·         Sign in then start searching for the item you desire
• ·         Choose the loan it button.

When your item arrives an email will be sent to you telling you that your item is available for pick up. Once you are done with the item return it back to the InterLibrary loan office. Nothing in life is free. So remember, if you don’t return an item you will be charged. That is the only catch to this feature. GET TO LOANING

Finding a reference book

Doing research can be as easy as you want it to be, or it can be as hard as you make it. Although a bit boring at times, research is needed in just about every profession known to man. Scientists conduct research for numerous reasons. Those reasons include cures, vaccines, boredom, etc… College students conduct research for papers for the most part. Ask any college student about the more challenging parts of college that you don’t find out about until after you’re actually ENROLLED in one. The most common response will be research papers. The crazy thing about research papers is that professors actually have you do research on material that, often times, have no history! Sorry for the off task statement, but when conducting research, you have to take shots at your professor. Anyway, back to topic.On the flip side, the majority of topics you need to research for school papers, has already been written about in numerous mediums, such as in reference books.  When  this second party conducts this research, it is often stored in a reference book. Finding a reference book has been made easy thanks to recent schooling (THANK YOU JESUS). These few steps will get you to a reference book.

• ·        Go to MSU libraries online
• ·         Scroll down to “Quicklinks” then over to “RACERTrac”  
• ·         You’ll see a search screen, click on the “advanced” tab
• ·         Scroll down to location and click “reference”

After all of this has taken place, you can begin your search. The results that show up will ALL be reference books. That, my friends, is a poor man’s guide to finding a reference book.

Finding a website

Advanced Google search screen

I was doing a paper on the problems of performance enhancing drugs in sports. The rubric for this paper stated that I needed to have at least one credible internet source. So with that said, I had to find a website, but not just any website. The majority of websites out there are just decent when needed for research. There are a lot of websites that look really legit and real but in reality they are fake as a three dollar bill. I needed a website that was reliable. I searched “performance enhancing drugs” in basic search in Google. That was an obvious mistake. Google, of course, comes from the numerical word googol, meaning a lot! So I had thousands of websites to choose from. Probably a very small percentage of those websites were useful to me and an even smaller percentage where useful to my paper. I started to use the truncation symbols to further narrow my search. Looking for information on performance enhancing drugs, I decided to use the organization domain or “.org” as you may know it. Using the site:org feature in advanced Google searching limits all domains to organization. There are multiple ways you can locate the “advanced” feature in the Google search engine. I simple typed in “advanced Google search” on the Google homepage search box. After typing advanced Google search in the box, it will take you directly to the advanced search page. In the end, this is what it looked like before I pressed search; “’Performance enhancing drugs’ site:org”.