INF 100 - Fifth Assignment


Required Readings and Preparation:

Read the following two examples of annotated bibliographies so that you will have a good idea of what one is when it's time to write your own. Both of these were written for classes in the graduate program in Library and Information Science at San Jose State:

Carefully read Chapter 5 in Introduction to Information Research, "Making the systems work," pages 73-96.

Go to the FirstSearch site at:
http://firstsearch.oclc.org/FSIP if you are on campus (no password required), or http://firstsearch.oclc.org/ if you are off campus (using the password supplied by the librarian).

  • Click on the "i" button labeled "intro." Read through the entire page that pops up.
  • Close the pop-up window and click on "Databases" and then "list all." You will see a list of the databases available. Click on the "i" in the "info" column next to some of the databases to find out what they are.
  • Click on "WorldCat" at the bottom of the list. WorldCat is a combination of thousands of library catalogs, containing millions and millions of books and other items. Type "Rory Litwin" into the search box and then select "author" for an author search, and then click "search." You will get a list of results one item long (an entry for the instructor's web zine, "Library Juice"). Click on the title for the full WorldCat record.
  • Click "Searching" again in the left column. Notice that you are still in WorldCat. Select "keyword" instead of "author" and try a search on "Latino." Browse the results and click on one of the titles. Study the results page to understand everything in it. Notice that each item has hot-linked descriptors that you can click on to browse in the database by subject. Notice that the gray bar above your results has buttons labeled "Subjects," "Libraries," "ILL," "E-mail," "Print," and "Help." Try each of these buttons and read about what you can do with them.
  • Click the "Help" button from the search page. Read the help topics relating to searching. (We will go over this in class - for now you should just get an introduction to the concepts.)
  • Click "Databases" again and select another database. Spend about an hour experimenting with different databases, reading about what is in them, understanding how to use them. Do some searches on your topic. Some items lead directly to the web pages that they catalog. Some items have to be retrieved from a library by some means, possibly by Inter-Library Loan (ILL). (Soon we will set up our ILL service so that you can order photocopied articles directly from FirstSearch.) Experiment with the contextual help system to understand how each part of FirstSearch works.

Assignment based on the above preparation:

Please answer the following ten questions in the form provided. Your answers will be emailed to the instructor. Each question is worth five points.

Your name:

Your email address:

From the annotated bibliographies:

What does the introductory part of an annotated bibliography do?

What do you do for each information source you include in your annotated bibliography?

From the reading in An Introduction to Information Research:

What is the difference between a controlled and an uncontrolled vocabulary?

How do you use a thesaurus (in an access tool)?

Why is searching by descriptor usually better than doing a free-text search?

Give an example of a search that uses both the boolean "and" and "or." (The example should make sense; that is, it should be a good search.)

From the FirstSearch exercise (you may need to go back into the trial databases site to answer these):

How many databases can you search at one time in FirstSearch?

What are two methods of finding a database to use for your topic?

What is the difference between the basic, advanced, and expert searches?

How can you "browse" in FirstSearch? (Hint: When can you use the "index" button and how do you use that function?)

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Last updated July, 2000