Barber Library Website Overview
Let’s Start Searching!
We’re finally ready to start searching! It takes a lot of work to research, doesn’t it?
So you have your research plan mapped out, it includes your information need and keywords, you open up the library homepage (cocc.edu/library) and….where do you click to start searching? There are a lot of options!
We know selecting a search tool needs to be as strategic as the rest of our research process, so the library homepage can be a bit overwhelming! But in this chapter we’ll break down all the different places that you can find search tools on the library website. We’ll focus on four main areas, so we won’t go in to all the particulars of the library website, but enough to get you researching!
A quick note, I included the URL to go directly to the library website above, but you can get here from any COCC webpage, just click on the word Library in the header (you don’t need to click on any of the drop-down options unless you want to go deeper in the library website). The word Library in the header will also be our breadcrumb back to the homepage. You’re probably going to end up with a lot of tabs open in your Internet browser by the end of this, that’s super common (in fact I have 25 open right now as I write this!), but if you get lost down a rabbit hole, you can look for that Library breadcrumb to take you back to familiar territory.
Barber Library Search Bar
The first, and most obvious, place we can start searching is the search bar on the homepage! This search bar is a really helpful quick start when you’re not sure where to go and what source types you’re looking for, which means you haven’t fully thought through your information need yet and aren’t being very strategic in your search. However, if you are doing presearch to make sure your topic is researchable, then this is a great place to search!
Watch and consider the following video to get a guided walk-through of the search bar on the homepage.
All Databases
Right below that search bar on the homepage, there’s a blue box that says All Databases. Clicking this link takes you to an alphabetical list of all the search tools available to you through the library. Each search tool is listed by its name followed by a short description of what you find when you use it to search. Similar to the activity in the previous chapter, these descriptions help you determine the types of sources that you would expect to find as well as the subject matters covered by the included sources.
Because there are a lot of search tools listed here, this list is not helpful if you’re not sure what search tool you want to use. Of course, you could read through every description, but one of the reasons you’re taking this class is to become more efficient at researching, and that doesn’t sound very efficient! For that reason, the All Databases page is only really helpful if you know the name of the search tool you want to use, like if you have a favorite search tool or g