1. Searching online catalogs
Week 4 Review
Searching online catalogs

2. True or False? Catalog records include the following information:
Author
Title
LC Subject
Location
True

3. True or False?
Anyone can create LC Subject Headings.

4. False:
Library of Congress Subject Headings are a form of controlled vocabulary
This means that only LC catalogers (and sometimes local catalogers) can create these headings.
They are built according to specific guidelines and rules.

5. Good or bad search?
Bad. This is not an authoritative subject heading.

6. Good or bad search?
Still bad. The library catalog isn’t like Google – it can’t interpret this search in a meaningful way for research.

7. Good or bad search?
This is a great way to begin your research in an online catalog! Begin with your keywords

8. Controlled Vocabularies
Why do we care about a controlled vocabulary when doing research?

9. Well?
Finding the controlled vocabulary terms, such as subject headings, allows the researcher to access all the records (or information) on a given subject, or topic. In an online catalog, Identify as many related subject headings as possible and explore them all.

10. Different headings, related topics…

11. Finally – nothing in our catalog?
Go further afield …

12. To other online catalogs
Subject headings in UW Libraries catalog

13. Annotated Bibliographies
Provide an evaluation of the material in your bibliography (not the same as a summary)
Are a way of justifying or confirming your choice of the material in your bibliography
Help others select material for their own research

14. Questions to answer What is its purpose? Is it authoritative, why?
Is it biased?
Is it up to date?
Who is it written for?

15. Sample annotation
Beals, Melba Pattillo.  Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock ’s Central High.  New York: Pocket Books, 1994.
In her 1994 memoir, Melba Pattillo Beals writes about her experiences as one of the “Little Rock Nine”—the nine African-American students who were selected to desegregate Little Rock High School in 1957.  Beals’s memoir underscores the entrenched nature of the racial hatred that existed in Little Rock during the 1950s, and explains the role of the federal troops that protected the students every day of the school year.  I will use Beals’ memoir to support my thesis that without federal intervention, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education could not have been implemented in Little Rock, and that segregationist whites in Little Rock would never have complied with desegregation without the enforcement of the decision by federal troops.