Library Transcripts

Video Link: https://youtu.be/YxbMRB14SuA

 

 

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Narration:

 

 

>>  The webinar will begin shortly. Please remain on the line.

 

>>  The broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen only mode.

 

>>  Hi everybody my name is Amanda Solomon, the social work library and today I'm joined with Julie James our health sciences Library and. Julie is my copilot today in the background answering questions, monitoring chat and chipping in as needed. So thank you for joining us this evening Julie.

 

>> AMANDA:       Again thank you for coming to the introduction to human services and social work library research. I am the social work librarian I want this to be a productive informal come I want you to ask questions. I want this to be you to get the most out of this as possible so if I am not covering something you really want to learn let Julie know, let me know in the question box. So we can make sure you get the most out of this as possible. We only have a short time together I want to make sure we cover our basics.

 

By the way I just wanted to show my human face, and I'm going to actually turn off my camera and concentrate on the content. So get rid of that.

 

Hopefully everybody can see my screen. This is just housekeeping. I do have a PowerPoint you will notice I don't follow up slide by slide. I go out and do something different so but you can access it later after the webinar. I think within 24 hours or so you should get an email that has a video of the webinar as well as the PowerPoint you can go back and look at. There was closed captioning, there is a link that Julie posted and that link is here as well. For the transcripts. This webinar we're going to cover a lot of stuff. If you have a question we will try to get all of your questions but if we don't please feel free to go to our ask a librarian email service after the webinar. Or when you get a chance tomorrow. And you will get a link to the recording.

 

Basically in the next 30 minutes or so we are going to cover your social work course readings and assignments guys as well as the human services. I have the research guides, research pages that I created for my human services and social work students. We are going to look at choosing databases and try to figure out exactly what a database is and how to use it. And we can do that by looking at some keyword strategies, how to enter keywords into the database to maximize irrelevant results. Lastly we will get more help this is a short introduction but as you progress and move forward with your research your going to watch get some more help and there is lots of support at the library.

 

Hopefully you can hear me. I'm --  the PowerPoint and I am going to start off at the library homepage. I have a bookmark on my laptop and recommend all my students bookmark the library home page.

 

>>  You can always just type in library.Waldenu.edu and that goes right there. I do it for my phone.

 

>>  Thank you I've not done that but there's lots of different ways to get to the library. The main thing is that you get there and you use it because is your gateway to databases, peer-reviewed literature, tutorials, videos and help chatting with a librarian, emailing a librarian, looking at certain ations, all sorts of resources. Becoming familiar with the library website is really paramount to getting you through this coursework, your assignments and as you move further through your program.

 

I wanted to point out first is if you are very new to Walden library then you're going to want to know where to go get your course readings and these are the all the required readings for your particular course that you are in right now. For example, if you are required to read an article and let's say social work 6002 would go into course guides on the website just click on that and you will scroll down until you get to the first letter of your course. For this example social work 6002 you go to S-V and scroll over and get to social work that is your course code and you go down and look for your course. This is my example changing lives changing society. And as you can see we have all of the required readings in alphabetical order by author. These are hotlinks that will take you directly to the full text.

 

This is so convenient. You don't have to go and find your articles although we certainly like for you to be able to do that. But you can just click on here and get your full text and read your required readings for your course. If there is a certain assignment that I feel needs more library instruction I will have the week two or week three assignment that is called an assignment guide and these give you more instruction for a particular assignment. For this week two assignment I am giving you more instruction some numbered steps on exactly how to tackle that particular assignment for your discussion post or paper.

 

That is your assignment guides and not all the courses will have assignment guides but some do and you will want to look for them on the left-hand side. That is your course readings. Depending if you are a social work or human services student you would want to go in and get those course readings and bookmark that to your computer as well as you can always get your readings and have them right there. Super convenient.

 

Any questions about the course readings or assignment guides?

 

>>  Not so far.

 

>> AMANDA:       Great I tend to talk fast and move fast so if I'm going too fast let me know and I will slow down. The second thing I want to show you that is really important to know about is our research guides and these research guides have been designed by the librarians that have subject specialty and it is a one-stop shopping for your program. For instance your subject resources to go into look at the databases and the resources and materials that are discipline specific for you and your program. For example, under select a subject, we can go to human services so there you have my new picture, my new updated photo. Also basically to explain this page you have a gold line box here. This is a great start. You can throw in some key words here and do a search and we can demo that later. It is a good start. It searches hundreds of human services related journals that I chose. It is more tailored to your discipline than the search on the main page. Is going to be more focused. On your discipline and related disciplines within human services like sociology and social work. Down the page there is so much to go through but the main thing is our databases these are databases that are most relevant to human services which as you know is multidisciplinary so there are databases dealing with business, maybe looking at nonprofits or becoming a leader in human services, a director. Maybe you are looking at something within the school system you might want to try education database. Social work, social work abstracts, these are your best bet databases. When you are doing assignments you want to come in here and do some, play around with these databases or for a quick and easy search you can do a search in the gold line box up top.

 

I have journals, some information about tests and instruments. The library does has video databases that have, videos with things like counseling, therapy sessions I think she might find useful. We have the encyclopedia of social work. I get asked about the DSM-V constantly so we finally got a link up to that manual here. There is a lot on this page to explore but the main thing is just knowing where it is picky may forget some databases that are most relevant to you as a human services student in this program so knowing that you can get here and can do a focused search and journals that are related to your program. You can also do a search in these databases and remember how to get there so that is the most important goal of having this page. The other thing is getting help. On the left-hand side I have a link to the ask a librarian service which we will talk about later. That is how you can connect with a librarian either by email or chat service. You can also make an appointment with me for some one-on-one assistance which is always fun to actually talk in real life. That is your research page. You can change your research home here and we can do the social work one which is quite similar but there are some differences.

 

Kind of the same format but depending on whether you are human services or social work student I white to come in here and become familiar with your research guides because --most new students focus in Thoreau which gets you familiar with searching and using the library but as you progress I prefer the students start using the databases that are more targeted to their program so for social work students would be the database Soci index. Moving away from Thoreau gives you more advanced research skills. You can start here I just think I would like you to also begin using your databases. You have more control and I will talk about that later.

 

Let's move away for now and definitely go into some of those discipline specific databases. Are there any questions about Thoreau or your subject guides?

 

>>  You are doing well. That is a quote.

 

>> AMANDA:       Thank you I appreciate that. Let's talk about databases for a minute. We want to use databases to find peer-reviewed literature. Databases basically house journals, hundreds and hundreds of journals and so peer-reviewed articles are found within those journals and you are going to be asked a lot of assignments to find peer-reviewed literature and that means that an article has been reviewed by an editorial board of their peers, other scholars within that field. If a journal is peer-reviewed it is a high level of research. The articles have been reviewed for accuracy and things like bias and fact checking. It is evaluated to a very high standard. That is what that peer-reviewed literature means and we use databases to find the peer-reviewed articles.

 

For example, let's go to our social work research guide. Click on social work databases. As a human services or social work student your best bet and the database you should most get familiar with is soci index with full text. It is the most comprehensive sociology research database there is. It covers lots of facets of sociology like criminal justice, gender studies, social work, family studies, violence studies, all sorts of stuff so it is going to be the one database that I most want my students to utilize. I will click on that. You have to sign in. Authenticate yourself as a Walden student. You will see if you are familiar at all with the main library search tool or some of our database we have a lot of databases by a vendor called Ebsco and a lot of students get confused. Think of that as this estrangement think of it as the Coca-Cola Company. It is like the owner of lots of other little sodas so there would be Dr. pepper or Sprite and those would be the databases. Ebsco are the owner, the vendor who hosts and owns a lot of different databases and soci index happens to be one of those. This is a very basic search screen with research boxes. Start taking about your particular research interest, finding articles. This is where we talk about keyword strategy. When you are thinking of adding keywords into the boxes you want to think in broad terms, think in concepts. Don't put long sentences because the database does not work like that. They are language specific and once you learn how to talk to the database is quite simple and you get the hang of it very quickly but it does take practice. Suppose that your research interests have something to do with veterans and PTSD and you are not sure where you're going to go with that but that is what you are thinking. You want to start broad. If you do have something with an acronym like PTSD you are going to want to put that in spell that out because to make sure you get all the articles that are related to that topic. The other thing I want to point out is the "or" at this point keyword strategy will talk about the and, or, not and that is fancy library jargon on connecting words and concepts so notice our three concepts are connected by the and. You are telling the database I have have this word somewhere in the abstract content and I also have to have one of these words. The or connector is different it is your telling the database that you would take any of the words that is connected by the "or." For example if we were looking at mental illness within the PTSD we could do mental health or mental illness or mental disorders. If you were looking at just another example with the or connector. I always capitalize. I don't think you have to. For me it is a visual of actually been able to see that my concepts are connected. Think of the or as expanding results. You will get more results because you're putting in more words that the database can search.

 

If you are struggling finding literature is always a good idea to add that. Maybe we are looking at veterans with PTSD and domestic violence. We could do an or and put intimate partner violence. Practicing that opens up your world when it comes to finding articles because you're giving the database a lot more leeway. One scholar in your discipline may refer to domestic violence as intimate partner violence so you don't want to rule out any relevant results that will help you for your assignment.

 

I think the main point I'm trying to make is that you do always want to start broad, as broad as possible. You can always narrow later. Particularly for your assignment you don't want to leave anything out or rule anything out just yet. Start broad. Always. And that is the only thing I do on that first page and I will tell you why. I like to get a list of results first before I put a bunch of limiters on that first page. I prefer that my students just do a broad search, hit search, get a list of results and this is where you take control of your search. What I mean by taking control of your search is before you start looking through your results and looking at the number and at the title and all these things, on the left-hand side of the page the database is going to give you limiters and this is what I mean by taking control of your search. You have a lot of control. Much more than you would in Google scholar or something else. There so much more control in the database that you can have. What I mean is one thing we want to do when looking for that peer-reviewed literature for your assignments is you want to click on this peer-reviewed scholarly box and that makes it easy. Once I click on that my results have been updated and I no longer have to worry if my journal articles are peer-reviewed or not. That is going to be off my shoulders. So checkmark that. Can also up your publication date. A lot of assignments they white to find current literature. We don't want outdated stuff, we don't want old articles from 1982. You can up that publication date to whatever you want.

 

You can type it in and hit enter and it will update your results automatically so now we have a very good control search. We have peer-reviewed literature and we have current literature. Then we can scroll down. There are other things you can start training your eyes to review like the subjects, different types of publications, the language, maybe looking at a particular geography. Become familiar with some of these limiters and they are different in different databases. If you are in psych info they will let you limit to methodologies so perhaps you're looking for a qualitative study or a quantitative study. You can have that control and limit to a particular research methodology. Really start have a critical eye, start looking at-take control of your results by refining, limiting and using the database limiters to get the most out of your results.

 

>>  I think it's worth pointing out the geography limiter for United States does not always work. Because they don't always specify United States it is likely think the world is centered on the United States.

 

>> AMANDA:       That is a good point. Is actually to me it is the weakest link. It is the weakest limiter. I like to point out because I do have some students that absolutely they don't want any articles about this particular country or something so we can try to limit that way but you won't want to limit by geography right away but I am pointing out you want to become familiar with your limiters. But yes the geography one works sometimes and not so great other times.

 

Now we have a really good search. I am very happy with my number of results. I am happy that I have peer-reviewed literature that is current. This point I'm going to start browsing. Notice that as you browse I think I want my students and this is a part of becoming information literate and having a critical eye, critical thinking when looking at your results. Is browsing the titles but not just the titles, browsing the subject headings. When you start looking at the subject headings what this means is these articles are covering these subjects, these are what these articles are mostly about, PTSD, mental health, medical care, public health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, disease prevalence. But when you start really look at the subject headings what it does is gives you ideas on other keywords and other things to search. You might be going down here and being oh look at this. This is -- I never thought of pet therapy animal assisted therapy. Maybe I will want to add that as a keyword and look where that takes me down the rabbit hole. When you look at your subjects you get ideas and these are things you're going to want to add or if you are a pen and paper person you're going to want to write this down, intimate partner violence. Maybe you did not think to put that may be were thinking domestic violence but the data base prefers partner violence. It will give you a lot, teach you how to read the subjects and understand the subject headings that the databases using. Learn that language so if you did want to think animal assisted therapy is what I am going, you would go back up to your search box and you would put in your additional keywords. You can take that as far as you want.

 

Think outside of the box. Think a lot of my students when they are searching they just get so regimented on I have to of these particular keywords but really you want to think outside the box and be very creative. You want to try a lot of different variety searches and different commendations. It takes time. I actually enjoyed doing it it is kind of like a challenge, how can I get the best results ever? But you want to, do not stick to just one or two of your concepts. When I was teaching in classrooms I would have my students do activity do a concept map so we would think about your research topic and we would put a tree above it with all the concepts that were related to that engine helps you visualize keywords. It is the same thing thinking outside of the box and try to think of as many words possible that is going to get you the best possible results. Keyword strategy takes practice. Once you get the hang of it and you start doing it becomes easier and easier.

 

Are there any questions? I feel like I have not even taken a breath.

 

>>  Take a breath and we will see if anyone would like to type a question into the question box pick anything for Amanda?

 

>> AMANDA:       I actually am almost out of time and I did want to point out a couple other features a database searching. While you are thinking of some questions. A lot of times you will notice that your HTML or PDF pops up but that is not always the case. Sometimes you might come up with something like this. Defined at Walden button and do not be afraid of the defined at Walden button it will link you to the full text the camp. That is what it is there for. If it does not work let me know and that one of the librarians know because it is supposed to link you to the full text. That is really important. So I am going to demo we find at Walden box and hope it gets there. When your PDF does not pop up you want to click the find at Walden. I am nervous because this is a 2019 but we will see. The next page that the button takes you to is this page and don't freak out or get worried. It is just trying to tell you that we think we found it in this database, click here. So just follow the links. Sometimes there is a lot of databases, just choose whichever.

 

It actually in this case brought us directly to the Journal of aggression maltreatment and trauma. We have a link to the PDF as well and our full text article so that is exactly what was supposed to happen. Defined at Walden button should link you to your article and I have a lot of students that if they don't see that full text pop up right away they, why can't I access this? I don't understand, why don't we subscribe to this, I need it. But look at that find at Walden button. And follow the links. It is a few more clicks but it should definitely get you there the best you can. Are there any questions on the database demo? It is really just practice doing a good keyword strategy and starting to look at those database limiters to take control of your results.

 

>>  The dreaded zero results. You want to stay away from very narrow searches.

 

>>  Like female veterans in Afghanistan with PTSD and ADHD or something like that. You don't want to start so narrow if you start very broad you can always narrow later. Just work down. You want to get a lot of results. And then choose from those and rate what is the current literature on the subject? What are people talking about and you will get more results if you go abroad. Sometimes you think that is too broad. No it is not. You can always narrow later. All right. So just to recap, we went into our course guides for social work and human services and you have all of your required readings on the library homepage. We looked at our subject guides for human services and social work where we were able to you can do a search your Goldline search box which is more targeted than the search on the main page. You can go at your databases depending on what your assignment or research question is. Maybe your topic or assignment is dealing more with psychology. You want to go into that psychology database. Maybe it is something military so don't limit yourself to soci index. maybe your assignment you have to go into another database so that is becoming database literate is seeing what is out there and practicing and then we just did a keyword strategy and with that results in that's pretty much your introduction to library research. It is about going in there and practicing a little bit but we always know you're going to have questions and the library has a lot of support. If you have a question the way, the best way to get help is right from the library homepage you can go directly into this little ask a librarian right here or you can going to get help. I like get help because it has webinars. We have a link to our upcoming webinars. We have a link to our recorded webinars. If you are very new to the library want to go back and brush up on library skills choosing a database, keyword strategies, things like that, you can do that. Our webinars are really good, short and sweet. We also have guides and tutorials. My favorite thing in the library honestly is our quick answers. To me it is the hidden jewel of the library because you can type in anything and usually you will get the most perfect answer there is. My colleague is the librarian behind quick answers and it is the best. I used all the time when helping students on reference. For example if you forgot what we said about peer review, you could just type it in our quick answers and get usually very detailed numbered list of how to do something or how to find a peer-reviewed article or what peer review is. The quick answers is really useful. If you cannot get hold of a librarian on chat, our chat hours are not there yet or something like that, you could do a quick answers and probably get the answer that you need. If not you could actually do our ask a librarian service and this is where you have access to emailing a librarian. You are typically answered within 24 hours but it is usually faster than that. We have chat service and you can chat with a real live human being picketing check our chat hours here. We do ask that your chat questions are basic and not too involved. That is okay because we can always follow up with email later. The main point is there is lots of support for our students. We are here for you. There webinars, tutorials, guides, email and chat so we are always going to have your back when it comes to helping you with library research as we know it can be intimidating but hopefully this webinar made it a little bit more not so intimidating and easier to navigate and understand. If so then I feel like my job here was done. I hope I did a good job. Are there any questions?

 

>>  I think you must've done a good job because we don't have any questions.

 

>> AMANDA:       Oh my gosh thank you guys. Well that's great. I typically do like to keep my presentations under 30 minutes. Because I know it is a lot of information at one time and I don't want to overwhelm you so we're going to go ahead and conclude for the evening. I want to thank you for attending. Much a thank Julie for helping me out and if you have questions make sure you do utilize the ask a librarian and good luck with your social work and human services research. Thank you everybody.

 

>>  Good night.

 

>> AMANDA:       Good night.

 

 

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