Library Catalog Research Resources
http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.drew.edu/lib/drew/home.actionSession 2: Searching Library Catalogs and Evaluating BooksLibrary Catalog
Research Resources
Electronic Books
- Google Books
- Ebrary
- Ministry Matters
- Oxford Scholarship Online: Religion
- Dissertations and Theses (especially D.Min theses)
Book Classification Systems for Print Books
Searching Drew's Library Catalog
- Simple Search (Humility)
- Boolean searching
- Search qualifiers; au=author, ti=title, su=subject
- Exact Search (Hope): browsing vs keyword searching
- Advanced Search (Theology)
- For reference books
- For electronic books
- For books in specific language
- Call-number search (Philosophy): allows you to browse the shelves
- Special Collections
- A subject-search strategy
- Enter a key word
- Find the official subject term (LCSH) for your topic
- Click on the official subject term
- Phrase searching: connect words with dashes, e.g. day-of-the-lord
Worldcat (see under W)
- Searches our holdings more deeply (Limit search to Drew alone)
- Searches holdings of other libraries
- Helpful features
- Sorting by date
- Automatic connect to interlibrary loan for books Drew lacks
Evaluating Books
- Scholarly vs. Popular vs. Professional
- Publisher types
- Some tools for evaluating books
The Art of Annotation
- A typical annotation will
- be under 250 words
- identify the thesis of the item (if it has one)
- Apply one or more of these simple evaluative measures
- Authority (where does the author teach?)
- Audience (who is the item written for?)
- Credibility (why accept what the author writes?)
- Currency (how recent is the item?)
- Perspective (what methodologies, theories, or possibly unstated assumptions are in play?)
- Purpose (what gap does the item fill in the scholarship?)
- Scope (what date, geographic, or topical range does the item cover?)
- Some guidance from other universities
University of Chicago Style
Plagiarism is ...
- Easy to commit in annotations
- Avoidable. Some guidance from: