LOGGING ON TO THE LIBRARY
FOR COMMUNICATION DISORDERS STUDENTS
The first place to go on the Internet road to
Library Research is to the CSUN Home
Page. It may look partly like this although it changes periodically. It provides a direct link to the
LIBRAY:
CSUN Home Page:
http://www.csun.edu
CSUN Library Home Page
http://library.csun.edu/
There is a wealth of information about the CSUN
Library and how it functions, on this Oviatt Library Home Page. You can even initiate a simple search for your
Topic right from here. Try it. Put
in AAC (for Augmentative and Alternative Communication) and see what you
get. It would be worth your
while, however, just to examine some of the links to get a feel for what is
here. Take a look, for example, under the ÒStart Your ResearchÓ heading, at the ÒCiting Your SourcesÓ link. This will give many useful examples of
different citation formats included at the end of term papers.
But for now our goal will be to navigate to the Home Page for
Communicative Disorders Distance Education students. Although we are
not official Distance Education Students, since much of our library research
will be done at home, we can use many of their tools and strategies. Hence, this page is our on-line Library
Mecca! Many of the links we will need for doing research in the next three
years can be identified and accessed from this page.
There is
an old saying that ÒAll roads lead to Mecca.Ó Admittedly, it was really Rome, but the
principle applies just the same here. In the LibraryÕs online labyrinth of
information pages and databases, there are many paths that lead to any
particular point of interest. The Distanced Education Home Page for
Communicative Disorders is no exception. We will come across many ways to get
there (the best of which is to Bookmark it, once we have gotten there the first
time.) I will show one route now, however, that has some interesting points
along the way.
Hence, when we reach the CSUN Oviatt
Library Home Page, (shown above) we can click on the Services link (the second link from the left in the menu
strip at the top of the screen—just after ÒFind ResourcesÓ). This will take us to a screen called,
as you might have suspected, ÒServices
Overview.Ó Here, towards the bottom of the list is a link for Distance Education Students. Clicking on
the ÒRead MoreÓ link This takes us to a page entitled Oviatt Library Services for Distance Education
Students. At the very bottom under
Program Links is the goal we seek -- Communicative
Disorders Program Library Use Guide
This is the
entrance to our Mecca (Library Use Guide) for Communication
Disorders and Sciences Distance Education students. We will look at that first.
Below this are several more links, the first two of
which of are important to all CD 485 Students.
The first deals with the concept of Federated
Database searches versus using the native interface of databases. The former is the research ÒexpressÓ and
covers many databases in one search.
The latter is the research ÒlocalÓ and permits a more in depth look at an
individual database and the use of the particular unique search features that
it may have that are not available through the express.
One extremely useful Federated Database
is ÒCommunication Disorders Multisearch, with which
we can search up to 10 databases simultaneously in one
uniform interface, and save records to our own electronic space with the same
login as our CSUN Email.
We can get access to both the Federated Database
(i.e. Multisearch) and the Native Interface databases
that would be of interest to Com. Dis. Students through the Multisearch
link on that pageÉ
The second leads to some very useful hints for
doing research in this CD 485 class.
An important link here is to our Communication Disorders LibrarianÕs. Marcia
Henry, home page.
Library Tip Page for CD 485 Class
http://library.csun.edu/mhenry/tipscd485.html
The first link on this page is to the Home Page for
our Department Librarian, Marcia Henry.
There is a wealth of information regarding research strategies on this
page.
(Continued)
The second (on the same Library Tip Page) is a
direct link to the Library Catalog,
which we will be using to find references for books available in the CSUN Oviatt Library (see below). We will be discussing the
Library Catalog in depth very shortly in another Section. But try it anyway. Follow the Library Catalog link and then
put in AAC
in the Search For box and see what happens.
The third, at the bottom of the Library Tips Page
for CD 485, is an important discussion on how to format citations. Since we will be using an APA style, this
discussion will be particularly Germaine to students in this class. This is embedded in the topic ÒLearn about the FIND TEXT link that most of
the databases offer. It often
looks something like thisÉ
Not only does the FIND TEXT link list Databases in
which the
full text of the article can be found, but also under the heading ÒMore OptionsÓ
there is a link called ÒSave citation information.Ó
This will allow us to save the reference in any of
a number of
formats. We can
select APA and have it formatted for usÉ
If all we wanted was the format, we could copy and
paste the reference into a paper we may be writing.
Meanwhile, back at the home page for our Librarian,
Marcia Henry, there is one particularly important link I would like to point
out.
Home Page for Communication Disorders Research Librarian--Marcia Henry
http://library.csun.edu/mhenry/
Towards the middle of the page, there is a direct
link to the Library Home Page for the Department of Communication Disorders and Sciences, developed
by Marcia Henry.
Communication Disorders & Sciences Library Home Page (Top)
http://library.csun.edu/mhenry/bibcd.html
This page lists everything we never thought or
maybe even wanted to ask about library research, including Book References,
direct links to databases, Journals and relevant Web Sits. Please note below the description
of the two WorldCat databases, the link to the CSU Union Catalog. This covers Books and periodicals that
may be in any CSU Library. This is
also listed among the databases covered by the Federated
Database--Communication Disorders Multisearch
Obviously there is a sea of choices in terms of
links we can use to search for books and journals covering topics we wish to
research. But before we begin to identify and explore the appropriate Databases
(Section V), we should take brief look at what is meant by the term Proxy
Server (Section IV).