Library tutorial for science
Section 1. The Library Web site

The Library Home page is your best starting point in looking for information. Note the tabs at the top:

• Library A to Z for details on borrowing, hours of opening, photocopying, and other services.

  Question A. How do you request items from the Joint Store, the Library's storage area on the Flinders University campus? B. How do you request an item that is on loan to someone else? C. Can you borrow a Reserve collection item for longer than three hours? D. How many books can you borrow at one time? How many demerit points do you incur for late return? E. How do you find past exam papers? F. On most printers in the Library you cannot charge printing to your University print allocation so how do you print from the Internet, Library catalogue etc? Answer To find answers, use the Library A to Z on the Library home page then choose: A. Joint Store B. Requests or Borrowing or MyLibrary C. Reserve collection D. Borrowing and Demerit points E. Exam papers F. Printing from network printers

• Library catalogue for finding books and journals. Start with the Catalogue tab at the top of each screen. Catalogue searching is covered in sections 2 and 4 of this tutorial.

  Question Does the Library catalogue lead to both print and electronic books and journals? Answer Yes, you can use the Library catalogue to find print books and journals in the Library and to link to electronic books and journals that the Library pays for.

• Databases for finding journal articles on a topic. Database searching is covered in section 5 of this tutorial.

  Question Why do you need to use databases? Why can't you just use the Library catalogue to find journal articles on a topic? Answer The Library catalogue includes journals such as New Scientist but (with a few exceptions) it doesn't include the articles within those journals. So you can use the Catalogue to find an article if you already know which journal it is in and which volume and page of the journal it is on. But if you don't know these details, you need to find them by searching your topic in databases. Unlike the Library catalogue, databases do include details of the articles within journals.

• Resource guides tab leads to sources useful for your subject e.g. Web sites, printed encyclopaedias and handbooks, guides for some essays. These sources are covered in section 3 of this tutorial.

• Note also on the side bar: Find other resources: Other libraries' catalogues. When we don't hold a book or journal you may need to check other libraries' catalogues.

Passwords

You will at times be prompted for your user name and password. The user name is your student ID preceded by the letter a (e.g. a1234567). The password is your University password, which appears initially on your confirmation of enrolment. Electronic use may be charged to your Internet allocation. Make sure you exit fully from the Web browser on University computers. If you don't, other students' subsequent external network use will be charged to your allocation.

Back to tutorial main page | Continue to section 2a