by Margaret Montet
Are you sinking into the quicksand of this technological age? Are you not able to keep up with advances in your favorite pastimes because their publications are no longer in print, but only online? Are you longing to take a class just for fun, but hesitating because you don’t know how to use the library anymore?
There are many opportunities for seniors and retirees to continue learning, and sometimes an excursion through the information jungle will enhance the experience. You can learn to find current information in the public library and on the Internet.
We call the skills needed to keep pace, “Information Literacy”. To you, this means developing the skills you need to find information, and deciding what information (especially online) is reliable. Let’s start with our old friend, the public library. Today, librarians use computers as tools to help find, organize and retrieve information. The Dewey Decimal System, the Reader’s Guide to Periodic Literature, and other traditional classification systems are still used. However instead of putting these indexes on cards or in thick heavy books, most are now available online. The search strategies used in these tools are similar: you can search by author, title, subject or keywords.
Most libraries now have OPACs, or Online Public Access Computers. These are simply the machines you use to find locations of books and other items in the library. Once you master the steps of looking up an item, the rest will be familiar. Ask a reference librarian to show you how your library’s OPAC works.
Suppose your class is reading To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. You can search for this novel by either typing in “To The Lighthouse” as a title, or by typing in “Woolf, Virginia” as the author. Depending on how your library classifies fiction, you will either be directed to the fiction section where you will look in the Ws, or, you will be given a Dewey Decimal number to find in the stacks. Sound familiar?
If your library does not own the specific book you are looking for, they can probably get it for you. The book may be obtained through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). You don’t need to know what library has the book, but you must supply the librarian with the author and title. The book could come from the next county, or it could come from the other side of the country. Please remember that no matter where the book comes from, your librarian will not be able to guarantee an arrival date. This will depend upon whether the book is on the shelf waiting for your request or if it is currently checked-out, and how long the US Post Office takes to get it to your library. Avoid waiting until the last minute to make your request!
The newest information is found in periodicals (magazines and journals). Most libraries have some kind of online tool or index for accessing articles in all types of magazines and journals. These tools work very much the same way as the OPACs. You can search by author, keyword or subject, and limit your search to specific periodicals or dates. When you find articles that are relevant to your topic, take a look at the citation (the bibliographical information and descripton) to see how it has been classified. There may be other useful search terms. Also, if you are writing an article or composing a speech, the information in the citation is what you need to give proper credit to the author. If you find an article that has only a citation and no full-text, check to see if your library can get the article for you through Interlibrary Loan, or find another library that subscribes to that periodical.
Suppose you have finished reading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse for your class, and you want to find some literary criticism to help you understand the novel or gain a new perspective. Try searching in a periodical database (Infotrac or EBSCOhost, for example), or a database specific to literature (maybe Literature Online Reference Edition or Gale’s Literature Resource Center) by typing in “Virginia Woolf” or “To The Lighthouse” as the subject. Search methods and syntaxes vary in these databases, so check with the librarian for a quick lesson on your library’s tool.
Now let’s consider the World Wide Web. Would you trust what you find on the World Wide Web? There is a lot of good information posted in cyberspace, but there is also a lot of junk. If you need to find a page from scratch, type a search term into the search box of one of the popular search engines (i.e., Google, Bing) Now consider the results. Look at the Web sites that have been returned. Is there an author listed somewhere on the site? Does the author list contact information? Is there a date when this information was posted? Is the text on the page trying to sell you something or some idea? How is it written? Are there grammatical or spelling mistakes?
A great place to find reliable Web sites is the Internet Public Library. This is a site designed by librarians who organized an index of quality Web sites for reference. You may either type a subject term into the box or click on the Resources by Subject button for a list of Web sites. When you find sites that correspond to your search query, check to see if there are any related sites listed.
As with any new skill, practice makes perfect. Be patient, perform searches often, and soon you will be an expert!
Margaret Montet, a writer and academic librarian, teaches information literacy skills at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania. This is an updated reprint of her article that appeared in the “Mature Years” Spring 2006 print edition
Related Article: See You Online! Tips for Using College Library Resources and the Web.
