IMPROVE YOUR ONLINE LIBRARY SKILLS - FREE TUTORIAL

1. ACADEMIC LIBRARY
ORIENTATION FOR ALL
USEFUL INFORMATION TO ENHANCE
GATEWAYS TO KNOWLEDGE

2. MISSION STATEMENT
• Basic library orientation
knowledge
• Bibliographies, literary surveys,
how do I organize my reference
results
• Where do I start guide how do I
prepare a research question,
search strategy for information
retrieval
• Coverage of all options
• Advanced topics – funds,
grants, text mining, data mining
The inspiration behind preparing these
tutorials is to have an A to Z guide of all
my information options.
In my years as a librarian and information
scientist for a number of universities,
hospitals, and high tech information
centers, I discovered that there is useful
information of which both lay men and
academicians are unaware.
The road to success in technology,
business or activities of all sorts is
knowing how to maneuver through vast
amounts of knowledge and information
that are inundating us – one needs to
have the knowhow in order to benefit
from the information explosion that is
currently occurring.
To know where to find the material in
need be it academic, technical, business,
etc.
To know all our options – print, digital,
books, eBooks, journals, periodicals,
websites, databases, open access,
patents, standards, grey literature,
dissertations, other formats such as text
mining, data mining, data sets.
To know where to begin – to develop a
search strategy
To provide a collection of searching tips
To be aware of computer software that
will manage all the data collected

3. Basic library skills
Whether public, school, college, university, information center library, the basic
principles are the same. One is interested in library layout, library services and library
catalogue, library website and all the online electronic resources within the library as
well as remote access.
The information needed to best start your search is to ask the librarian the following
questions
What are the library services:
Loaning services – books, journals, reference books
What are the library regulations – amount of books,
renewal services automatic or otherwise
Interlibrary loaning system
Library catalogue
Reference services
Electronic resources
Library tutorials
Recommended sites and mega sites

4. Library layout
Step one – how do I access the library catalog
Step two – how are the books organized – by Dewey, UDC,
other methods – once you are able to find the shelves with the subject you need, you can
search for a particular item/book or browse the entire subject area
Step three – ask for reference services to find out for supplementary material you may not
be aware of
Step four – where are the computers situated
Step five – try an access additional electronic resources
Step six – view the available library tutorials, library website, and various recommended
sites for your research field

5. Publication types – enhancing search options
awareness of all search options
• Electronic resources
• Academic databases
• Free and open-access
databases
• eBooks
• Patents
• Standards
• Recommended sites
• Google possibilities
• Printed books
• Reference books,
manuals, guide books,
encyclopedias,
dictionaries
• Textbooks
• Journals
• Data books, technical
papers, white papers

6. Bibliographic list - example
1. E.P.Popov: Mechanics of Materials, SI Version, Prentice-Hall
International ed.
2. R. C. Hibbeler: Mechanics of Materials, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
3. F. P. Beer, Jr., E. R. Johnston, J. T. DeWolf. Mechanics of Materials.
What are the main catalog or database search fields
By author, by title, by publisher, by ISSN, by ISBN, by year, by
subject, by subject headings, and numerous other search fields
Omitting the use of stop words – a, an, the at the beginning of
title is essential
Subjects and subject headings – most libraries use subject
headings given by the Library of Congress; specific databases
have there own subject headings such as Medical subject
headings, known as MESH, or Inspec subject headings in
engineering. Some databases have their own thesaurus, which
is useful when preparing a search strategy.

7. Dewey decimal system
Classification systems are for creating systems in facilitating the finding of a book, or
browsing the stacks for similar topics otherwise unknown.
The most common classification system used by the majority of libraries including the
Library of Congress, OCLC, the majority of public and university libraries.
This classification method was first published in the United States by Melvil Dewey in
1876.
The entire knowledge known to the world is divided into decimal numbers allowing
its growth until today.
Running order of numbers allows browsing – all the material belonging to a certain
subject will be near each other by number and by alphabetic order.
Of course, there will be some libraries with their own synthetic system.