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Well, welcome to Level Up.
Level Up is a series of short presentations. This one is going to be about 10-12 minutes long.
Aimed at highlighting various resources, tools, potential uses, expertise that can help library patrons.
And we are currently in virtual mode. And you can find recordings and resources for the series on an InfoGuide.
at infoguides.rit.edu
slash LUV and I will toss that into the chat.
And I am now going to share my screen
to give the formal short presentation.
Alright.
So as I said welcome to Level Up. So today's session is entitled Why the library?
And the big question that we are going to address here
is a why use library electronic resources when the web is full of free and easy to find information
and if you only use free web resources
you are probably overlooking valuable information. Your access to premium RIT Library resources
can really expand your information universe.
So the purpose of today is to give some basic grounding
in understanding how library resources differ from those on the open or free web.
So, of course, one of the reasons people use the open or free web is Google
makes searching easy, it's easy, it's efficient in doing some of your research
and in seeking information and you are probably very successful
every time you search Google. You're finding what you need. For example
Let's say you're looking to go to a movie in the area.
And all you have to do is Google the name of the movie and it will immediately prompt you with places to see that movie and times to
go see it. And then you've decided, ok after the movie we want to go out and get a meal and we want to have some Greek cuisine.
So Google's also very helpful at helping you find local restaurants
because companies, it's usually companies, they are optimizing the Google search results
so that you the consumer will discover their services and their products. So Google connects consumers to their offerings.
So this is one example where people feel confident in searching Google because they are always getting
good results when they're looking at things like this.
Now the other source on the open free web that people use is
Wikipedia! And it's free, that's a bonus. It's easy to search.
And it's a resource offering lots of information on lots of topics. And I am not poo pooing Wikipedia.
I do think it's a valuable resource because it's getting lots of input from people who were very interested in
the huge range of topics that it is offering. For example if you were looking for information on
tires where else could you go to get an immediate history on tires?
Along with a huge reference list. The reference list on a Wikipedia
entry is like a free treasure map
to different articles, books, and resources on this topic.
But if you try to follow that treasure map you will soon discover that not everything in that references list
is either on the web or available for free on the web.
There also in addition to Wikipedia there's something called Google Scholar.
And this is something a lot of faculty might use and some students use.
And what Google Scholar is trying to do is index scholarly or academic articles.
And there are plenty of articles
on Google Scholar for those looking for academic articles.
Well in reality there are no articles on Google Scholar
as it's just a search tool. But it's a search tool that will help you discover articles that exist
in the academic sphere. And yes sometimes they're free
but usually with academic literature what you find is the articles are hidden behind a paywall.
So it wants you to pay for the articles or to subscribe to the journal that they're in.
But while you are enrolled in college, in this case at RIT,
you will probably have access to the full text
of most of the academic articles you discover
through Google Scholar but you do have to go into the library's premium resources.
One of the things to keep in mind if you are using Google Scholar is you need to set your Google Scholar settings
to make sure it's looking at RIT's premium resources.
Because of it finds a resource and it knows RIT has it, it'll give you easy direct access. So make sure you set the Google Scholar settings.
And there is a link on the guide for this session as to how to do that.
So you have these free resources out on the web.
But we still think you should use the library. But one of the things people don't really understand is what is today's library?
Now this is a definition. This is the classic definition of a library. A building or room containing collections of books, periodicals,
films, and other items.
But this definition is very dated.
And libraries today serve as more than just access to printed materials.
Most libraries, whether they're public libraries or they are academic college libraries
offer Electronic Resources. They offer ebooks, online periodicals which contain articles
via premium databases. They offer productivity software like word processors, spreadsheets, slide creation tools.
And of course most libraries offer free access to the Internet.
So to think of the library as a building of books is limiting your possibilities
in searching for information.
Today's academic library has many of the physical things
that libraries of old had. But today's academic library also has tons of Electronic Resources
they contain information that is not free on the web.
And while you're attending school here at RIT, you have access to hundreds of electronic databases with scholarly articles,
news, videos, standards,
chemical information, medical literature,
computing information, art resources, historical information, and a ton more.
You will probably never have access to this amount of information again unless or until you enroll in another college.
Now in addition to today's academic library, as a student living in Monroe County
near RIT, you also have access to the local public library.
So the local public library near RIT is called the Henrietta Public Library.
And then the entire public library system in the area is the Monroe County Library System.
And you can get a library card at the Henrietta Library if you're living in Rochester. There is a link to the Henrietta Library on the InfoGuide
for this session. And they have, they don't have as many databases as we have
but they might have some databases we don't have. A lot of public libraries have genealogy databases.
That's something an academic library might not buy.
Now in addition to a local public library.
in some states the largest city in the state which usually has the largest library system
offers residents of the state and people attending school in the state, people working in the state no matter where they live,
you don't have to live in New York City you can get a New York Public Library card if you're living,
working or attending school in New York state. These are free
and you'd will get access
to hundreds of premium resources on that you can access directly from home
using that library card number and yes the New York Public Library has some resources
that the RIT Library does not have access to
but could be helpful in your research.
So keep in mind using all of these different libraries because of these premium resources
can expand your information universe.
But what is a premium resource? Well the key characteristic of a premium resource is
it's available only by subscription or fee. So let's think about videos. So think about YouTube.
It is a platform that offers a lot of free videos and then Netflix is a platform that offers videos, in this case it's usually television, film or
documentaries, for a fee. It is a subscription service it is a premium service.
In the case of a library there are tons of companies selling us article databases, standards databases, medical information
databases and we buy them. We pay a fee or we subscribe yearly
to get them to offer our students and our faculty and our staff access.
So we buy premium resources across all the topics and subjects taught at RIT. Now they are designed to support
classes and research. Where a public library as I said might buy a genealogy
database because a lot of people out in communities are interested in doing family history research.
And in addition to premium resources, this idea of subscription resources,
you also have access to through using your library what's called Premium Service that's named Interlibrary Loan.
Interlibrary Loan is a service that many libraries have. A public library's usually going to charge a fee
to use it and they might not have access to the same type of things that an academic library like RIT has access to.
What is Interlibrary Loan? It's a service where if you have maybe discovered book exists on your topic
or an article but you've also come to realize that RIT doesn't already have that book or RIT doesn't have access to that article then
we can ask, and you just place an order, to have the Interlibrary Loans service track it down and find
a copy. That if it's a physical book we can get to you or if it's an article we can get as a PDF.
And you can then get access to it. So our premium resources have a lot but they don't have everything. So Interlibrary Loan library
is a Premium Service that you use to complement the tools you use to discover resources.
Now can you get everything from Interlibrary Loan? And the answer is no. There are some things that libraries will not loan like textbooks.
Libraries hate loaning textbooks because they want their students have access to them.
And then there are some things that libraries won't buy. For example market research. Most libraries will not by market research
because the cost of a market research report usually starts around $2000.
And they have what is called a short shelf life.
The information ages very fast and isn't helpful. So most academic libraries will not buy market research reports
to lend. They buy access to market research reports in their premium databases
for their students to use.
So keep in mind that ILL or Interlibrary Loan is a great Premium Service that complements
the premium resources. Now what if you have been going along all this time you've been at RIT or another college
and you've always found what you need on the web.
Have you found all the things that you need on the web?
That's a question you might not know the answer to unless you further explore what the library has.
Because the web isn't always going to give you clues to information that a library has.
Now who might know that? And that is the subject librarians at your college.
I am the business librarian and there's librarian that supports each of the colleges and they're familiar with the subjects
taught in those colleges and the databases that support those subjects.
So subject librarians spend their lives searching for information
in particular subject areas. They don't know everything about everything.
But an experienced subject librarian knows where to search, how to search, what to look for
and what might not be available. And they can teach you how to search for yourself
and they can help level your expectations
around the information you're seeking and ultimately they are going to save
you time.
So back to this original thought of why use a library? As I said just in the previous slide the subject expertise
offered by the subject librarians to give you direction and instruction around the things that you're learning at RIT to complement
that with premium resources that offer articles, books, and other information.
And overall you can access lots of info that you cannot get for free on the web
and that will help your research projects.
They will help you stay informed
about your community, the country you are in,
or the world in general.
You have access to tons of news and other resources
from around the world and ultimately
at RIT your tuition dollars have already paid for all of this information. Just like your tuition dollars pay for the gym.
So why not use or explore the resources that you have access to?
And if you're paying taxes in a community, your tax dollars are paying for the public libraries.
So use the public libraries that your dollars have bought information for.
So where to start? This is kind of key because even though I can lay out the scope of what
you have, and give you ideas.
One of the hardest things is to understand, well I might be interested in this so where on earth do I start?
Without talking to anybody a great place to start is the library website.
If you go to the library website there is a box
right in the center that's called a Summon box and that Summon search sits on top of
all the article databases.
So if you search in that box that's right on the library home page which is linked on the guide,
you're searching across most of the article databases and the book catalog and you can start to discover some of the things you didn't
realize you had access to.
There's also something called the InfoGuides. If you've attended another library you might have heard of Lib or LibGuides.
The LibGuides are guides curated by the subject librarians with information and resources with some context.
So if you were looking for marketing research, there's a marketing InfoGuide
that lists the best databases for different types of marketing information. Whether its articles, demographics, market research reports.
And then ultimately chatting with the librarian, chatting with one of the subject librarians or reference librarians
is a great way to discover some of the resources. And that conversation is gonna be more targeted than the library website.
It's going to be more targeted than the InfoGuides information.
And no matter what college you are at
the library's bound to have a department that is called a reference or research.
We call ourselves reference librarians and the department we work in is Research and Instruction Services. So ultimately
start exploring. Start exploring what you have access to whether it's with a librarian at your side.
Or you're just taking a dive into the Summon search on the library homepage.
Because there is a lot of interesting info that is hidden within the library's premium resources.
So that the short, as Level Up is, a short presentation on a small topic.
That concludes this Level Up session. Thank you for attending or watching this presentation.
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