🎧 08 - Finding literature

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Track 8: Finding Literature

He who seeks shall find. With us that is especially easy, with our research portal JUSTfind.

JUSTfind offers you comprehensive possibilities to search for what you are looking for. You can – traditionally – search for a book and find out where in Giessen it is located. However, if you are looking for quick information about a topic, which can be found with the help of electronic sources for example, JUSTfind also is the right place.

Let’s try it right away. Go to the foyer and log into one of the computers using your s-code (s-Kennung) or g-code (g-Kennung). Now you can find our research portal JUSTfind on our website. Found it? Perfect.

Now let’s pretend you are interested in the book named “Kognitive Psychologie“ by the author John Robert Anderson. For expressive search terms you should type the authors name and a concise keyword from the title into the search-box. For example “Anderson“ and “Psychologie“.

The book and it’s several editions will appear on first place in your hitlist. The green and red signals on the left side tell you whether or not the book is available. Andersons ”Kognitive Psychologie“ is available and now we are going to take a closer look at it.

With one click on the title you can get a the detail view. In the upper part of the detail view you can find the bibliographic information. The lower part provides information on where to find the book, how many copies there are and whether or not they are available.

The shelfmark is highly important. It is recommended to write it down because the shelfmark tells you where in the library the book is located.

Properly equipped you can now set off to the shelf. If you are not too familiar with our library you can use the link “Standort in der Bibliothek anzeigen“ besides the shelfmark. By clicking it, a plan of the reading rooms will open up with the book’s location marked red.

If the availability signal is red, because all copies of the book are borrowed, please click the link “Place a hold“. With your chip card number and the password for your user account you can reserve the book. As soon as it is returned, we will send you an e-mail and reserve it for you for one week.

Many titles are also available as e-books. You can see whether or not that is the case on the left side of the hitlist or by simply clicking the title. Let’s also look at an example here. Search for “Das Jahrhundert der Restaurationen“. The name of the author is Volker Sellin.

The title should show up at the top of the hitlist with the note “e-book“ attached to it. One click on “Full-text“ and you can open one of the chapters and start reading.

You have now mastered the fundamental principles of literature research. However, JUSTfind offers you even more. Let’s start another research. We are researching the history of Prussia (in German: Preussen). One of the most famous experts in this field is the Australian-British historian Christopher Clark. Therefore type the keywords Clark (C L A R K) and Preussen (P R E U S S E N) into the search-box and look at the three tabs above the hitlist. You will notice that the number of hits between the tabs “Catalogue (OPAC)“ and “Articles & More“ is different. Why is that? Let’s have a look:

Under “Catalogue (OPAC)” you can find – as you already know – a list of the books written about Prussia by Christopher Clark: in the hitlist you find his award-winning work named “Preußen – Aufstieg und Niedergang“ as well as the English original title “Iron Kingdom“. Furthermore, the list shows you Clarks biography for Wilhelm II, who was not only the last German emperor but also the king of Prussia.

At left margin it shows you that all hits are printed books and not for instance DVDs, articles or e-books. One click on the title will direct you to the shelfmark of the book and finally to the bookshelf very fast.

The tab “Catalogue (OPAC)“ is your first choice if you are looking for a book, an e-journal or a journal issue in a library in Giessen. Because with the OPAC you can search within the entire inventory of the Justus Liebig University’s library system.

Now choose the tab “Articles and More“. With it you can especially search for online accessible articles, books and even bibliographic databases. Newspaper articles or edited volumes are also shown in the hitlist, as well as licensed and freely available Internet sources for your topic.

Instantly the hitlist will get longer – and more diverse. Let’s see what has been added. For example, there is a Spiegel interview with Christopher Clark and reviews to his books. Furthermore, you will find essays by Clark about the history of Prussia that were published in different anthologies or journals. And of course Christopher Clarks books about Prussia, which we have already seen earlier in the first tab “Catalogue (OPAC)“.

The tab “Articles and More“ is especially useful for a broad search on a topic – let’s say for browsing. Unlike with an Internet search engine like Google you are not getting all types of results, but only those that can be relevant to you with your scientific research. But careful! This tab still doesn’t come close to a systematic literature search!

You find the hitlist too long? No problem, you can subsequently limit your results to certain criteria. Choose the filter settings on the left site.

Let’s pretend you already found a title you want to read. For this purpose just click “Find full-text“ (“Volltextsuche“). This works from the hitlist as well as in the detailed view of the individual title. The system now shows you how to get the requested title: whether it’s accessible online or via a licensed database or available as a printed book in the library. One click could be enough to get to the text.