LOGGING ON TO THE LIBRARY FOR COMMUNICATION DISORDERS STUDENTS

The first place to go on the Internet road to Library Research is to the CSUN Home Page. It may look partly like this although it changes periodically. It provides a direct link to the LIBRAY:

 CSUN Home Page: 
http://www.csun.edu

CSUN Library Home Page 
http://library.csun.edu/

There is a wealth of information about the CSUN Library and how it functions, on this Oviatt Library Home Page. You can even initiate a simple search for your Topic right from here. Try it. Put in AAC (for Augmentative and Alternative Communication) and see what you get. It would be worth your while, however, just to examine some of the links to get a feel for what is here. Take a look, for example, under the “Start Your Research” heading, at the “Citing Your Sources” link. This will give many useful examples of different citation formats included at the end of term papers.

But for now our goal will be to navigate to the Home Page for Communicative Disorders Distance Education students. Although we are not official Distance Education Students, since much of our library research will be done at home, we can use many of their tools and strategies. Hence, this page is our on-line Library Mecca! Many of the links we will need for doing research in the next three years can be identified and accessed from this page.

There is an old saying that “All roads lead to Mecca.” Admittedly, it was really Rome, but the principle applies just the same here. In the Library’s online labyrinth of information pages and databases, there are many paths that lead to any particular point of interest. The Distanced Education Home Page for Communicative Disorders is no exception. We will come across many ways to get there (the best of which is to Bookmark it, once we have gotten there the first time.) I will show one route now, however, that has some interesting points along the way.

Hence, when we reach the CSUN Oviatt Library Home Page, (shown above) we can click on the Services link (the second link from the left in the menu strip at the top of the screen—just after “Find Resources”). This will take us to a screen called, as you might have suspected, “Services Overview.” Here, towards the bottom of the list is a link for Distance Education Students. Clicking on the “Read More” link This takes us to a page entitled Oviatt Library Services for Distance Education Students. At the very bottom under Program Links is the goal we seek -- Communicative Disorders Program Library Use Guide

This is the entrance to our Mecca (Library Use Guide) for Communication Disorders and Sciences Distance Education students. We will look at that first.

Below this are several more links, the first two of which of are important to all CD 485 Students.

The first deals with the concept of Federated Database searches versus using the native interface of databases. The former is the research “express” and covers many databases in one search. The latter is the research “local” and permits a more in depth look at an individual database and the use of the particular unique search features that it may have that are not available through the express.

One extremely useful Federated Database is “Communication Disorders Multisearch, with which we can search up to 10 databases simultaneously in one uniform interface, and save records to our own electronic space with the same login as our CSUN Email.

We can get access to both the Federated Database (i.e. Multisearch) and the Native Interface databases that would be of interest to Com. Dis. Students through the Multisearch link on that page…

The second leads to some very useful hints for doing research in this CD 485 class. An important link here is to our Communication Disorders Librarian’s. Marcia Henry, home page.

Library Tip Page for CD 485 Class
 http://library.csun.edu/mhenry/tipscd485.html

The first link on this page is to the Home Page for our Department Librarian, Marcia Henry. There is a wealth of information regarding research strategies on this page.

(Continued)

The second (on the same Library Tip Page) is a direct link to the Library Catalog, which we will be using to find references for books available in the CSUN Oviatt Library (see below). We will be discussing the Library Catalog in depth very shortly in another Section. But try it anyway. Follow the Library Catalog link and then put in AAC in the Search For box and see what happens.

The third, at the bottom of the Library Tips Page for CD 485, is an important discussion on how to format citations. Since we will be using an APA style, this discussion will be particularly Germaine to students in this class. This is embedded in the topic “Learn about the FIND TEXT link that most of the databases offer. It often looks something like this…

Not only does the FIND TEXT link list Databases in which the full text of the article can be found, but also under the heading “More Options” there is a link called “Save citation information.”

This will allow us to save the reference in any of a number of formats. We can select APA and have it formatted for us…

If all we wanted was the format, we could copy and paste the reference into a paper we may be writing.

Meanwhile, back at the home page for our Librarian, Marcia Henry, there is one particularly important link I would like to point out.

Home Page for Communication Disorders Research Librarian--Marcia Henry


http://library.csun.edu/mhenry/

Towards the middle of the page, there is a direct link to the Library Home Page for the Department of Communication Disorders and Sciences, developed by Marcia Henry.

Communication Disorders & Sciences Library Home Page (Top)
http://library.csun.edu/mhenry/bibcd.html

This page lists everything we never thought or maybe even wanted to ask about library research, including Book References, direct links to databases, Journals and relevant Web Sits. Please note below the description of the two WorldCat databases, the link to the CSU Union Catalog. This covers Books and periodicals that may be in any CSU Library. This is also listed among the databases covered by the Federated Database--Communication Disorders Multisearch

Obviously there is a sea of choices in terms of links we can use to search for books and journals covering topics we wish to research. But before we begin to identify and explore the appropriate Databases (Section V), we should take brief look at what is meant by the term Proxy Server (Section IV).