Welcome to Online Researching

After completing this tutorial, you should open the checklist [requires Adobe Acrobat Reader] that highlights the material explained in this tutorial. You will be responsible for knowing each item on the checklist for the final exam.

In the old days (just twenty-some years ago), finding items in a library meant having to search up to three card catalogs—one for authors, one for titles, and another for subject headings. They could take up a fair amount of floor space, and the cards they contained were partly typed and partly handwritten, sometimes incorrectly filed or missing, often messy and difficult to read. Once you found the right information, you had to hunt around for a pencil and piece of paper and copy the information by hand. It was slow, but it did the job.

Today, research libraries have replaced card catalogs with electronic databases and search interfaces to make retrieving information quicker, more powerful, and easier (though not always easy!). These allow records to be printed and—occasionally—an entire journal or newspaper article to be accessed on-screen.

After completing this tutorial, you will be able to find information stored in electronic databases using resources provided by Calvin's Hekman library as well as public search engines such as Lycos, Google, and Teoma.