Research in the Central High School Media Center Connie L. Heller

This presentation will guide students through research in the Central High School Media Center. It is assumed that viewers are familiar with Internet searches with search engines. Therefore, the emphasis will be upon research with the (newly designed) Alabama Virtual Library and with the Library catalog program Destiny.

Start your research at the Alabama Virtual Library (

Click on View All of Our Resources to see the list of databases. Hover the mouse over the Information button to see more information about each database.

Click on InfoTrac General OneFile to search that particular database. The tabs display results of certain current topics.

Type your search information and click on whatever boxes you need underneath to limit the results.

That search yielded 321 results.

Click on the triangle next to Limit by and you can see that there are 50 articles with William Faulkner as the subject. Click on the link to see only those articles. This cuts down on the number of articles that you have to read.

Now that you have the 50 articles, you can scan the titles and excerpts to see which ones would be of most use.

This one looks interesting. The notation on the right identifies it as an article (as opposed to a book review, etc.) and the camera icon tells you that there are images with the article. You can view this article either as Full-text or as PDF document.

Full-text view looks like a regular web page, with the capability of highlighting and copying text and images.

The PDF version looks like a photocopy of an actual magazine. It may be a little less readable than the other format, but the information is the same.

If you need to print items that you have searched, you have several options. 1.Print directly from the Internet (includes articles in Full Text View). This can include the entire webpage, or only certain pages or highlighted text only. 2.Print PDF articles. You can also make page selections. 3.Copy text from various portions of the webpage or from multiple webpages into Microsoft Word (or other word processing program).

When printing from the Internet, it is a good idea to do a print preview to see how many pages you will be paying for BEFORE printing. If you choose to select text and want to print ONLY the highlighted text, make sure you click the Selection button.

In the PDF Print menu, notice that you can select certain pages to print. You can pinpoint which pages are needed in the PDF Reader program without doing a print preview.

To print part of the document in Microsoft Word, just highlight what you need and tell the computer to Copy.

Open Microsoft Word and tell the computer to Paste.

Go back to the article and click on Citation Tools to see the recommended way to cite the document. You can copy and paste this information into Word also.

You can adjust margins, fonts and font sizes as needed to use as few pages as possible.

To check on Library holdings ON CAMPUS, just type destiny in the Internet address bar of the browser. At home or at school, you can go to CHS webpage and click on Media Center.

At this point, select one of the Library Catalog options, based upon your location.

Click on Central High School to search the collection.

For a simple keyword search, type in your topic and hit Enter. (More complex searches are available if needed.)

The results may be in different formats. Those with a red book icon are, of course, books. Always check on the right side of the page to check availability (if the book is in the Library or checked out). Please see a Student Library Aide if you need help in locating your selected book.

If you have any questions, please let a Student Library Aide or a Media Specialist know. Enjoy your research!