Unit 2 Hunting for Treasures

The word ?library? is derived from Latin ?liber?, which means "book".

A primary function of a library is to be an organized storehouse of information published throughout time. As well as finding very current information, you can also find books that are no longer published and older issues of magazines.

Items are organized so you can find all the sources on a topic. For example, when you search for a book in the library catalogue you will get a call number. The books shelved near the same call number will cover a similar topic. Librarians select books, magazines, journals, databases, and Web sites. The library collects sources considered reliable, historically relevant, and valuable.

Libraries have large collections of information on a variety of carefully selected and organized topics. The key idea when using the library is that you are getting quality over quantity. Print or electronic library resources are the best sources to use when starting your research. The type of information you need will change depending on the question you are trying to answer.

Magazines publish articles on topics of popular interest and

current events. The articles are written by journalists and are for

the general public. You can find print magazines at newsstands and in libraries. Popular science magazines may be quite attractive in appearance, although some are in a newspaper format. They are often highly visual with a lot of advertisements, colour, photos, graphics and drawings though they report on research as news items. They also contain feature stories, editorials and short articles with no bibliographies or references. In fact, a member of the editorial staff, a scholar or a freelance writer, not a subject expert, may write articles in this type of periodicals. The language of these publications is suitable to any educated audience who are not necessarily specialists in a particular area of research but have interest and a certain level of intelligence. News and general interest periodicals hardly ever cite sources. The main purpose of periodicals in this category is to provide information, in a general manner, to a broad audience.

Journal articles are written by scholars in an academic or professional field. An editorial board reviews articles to decide whether they should be published.

Journal articles may cover very specific topics or narrow fields of research. The main purpose of a scholarly journal is to report on original research or experimentation in order to make such information available to the rest of the scholarly world. That?s why the audience is students, scholars and researchers and the language of a scholarly journal uses specialized vocabulary of the discipline. Scholarly journals generally have a sober, serious look and contain many graphs and charts but a few exciting pictures or advertisements. Moreover, long and in-depth articles, bibliographies and references as well as abstracts are also typical for this kind of periodicals.

Newspapers provide articles each day about current events and are a good source for local information. Newspapers, like journals and magazines, are called "periodicals" because they are published regularly, or periodically.

Books cover virtually any topic, fact or fiction. For research purposes, you will probably be looking for books that synthesize all the information on one topic.

Encyclopedias contain factual articles on many subjects. There are two types of encyclopedias - general and subject. General encyclopedias provide overviews on a wide variety of topics. Subject encyclopedias contain entries focusing on one field of study.

The Web allows you to access information on the Internet through a browser. One of the main features of the Web is the ability to link quickly to other related information. Every day more and more electronic books, encyclopedias and periodicals are available on the Web.

(Adapted from http://ulibnet.mtsu.edu.html)