Newspapers / The Guilfordian (Greensboro, N.C.) / March 24, 2000, edition 1 / Page 12
Part of The Guilfordian (Greensboro, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
March 24, 2000 LIBRARY INFORMATION 10l By Kate Hood GUEST WRITER My work in the library has consisted of little public service, as we call it. Mostly I've been working in technical services, where we order, receive and pre pare materials for the shelves. But lately I've been sitting in the stacks for an hour a day (2-3 p.m.) helping people find the periodi cals they need. I didn't realize until very recently that for some —especially new —users we need to be clearer about the dif ference between searching for a title and an article. In an age when you can find most anything on one computer, it may be difficult to imagine that there are very different ap proaches to title and article searching. [Thanks to Malone Stinson, one-time reference li brarian and currently cataloger, for this insight.] When I came through Guilford nearly 30 years ago, there were distinct visual cues: there was a large wooden cabinet (called a card catalog) divided into sections for author, title and subject cards. These were used The observance of a "Car nival" (aka Mardi Gras) before the Lenten period (a Christian symbolic penitence from Ash Wednesday to Easter) is not new. It originated in the middle of the second century in Rome when S|HJL 'nJB k w IHK Did you earn your beads? i* : - „ c Features to find books in our library. The shelves nearby were full of rows and rows of indexes, which were used to locate specific articles in periodicals housed in a different part of the library. The indexes were published at regular inter vals, just like the journals they covered, because each journal was like a never-ending book with lots of often rather unconnected chap ters. We don't have those cues anymore. Especially now that the online catalog has a web-based version, searching for both book and journal titles and journal ar ticles can take place in the Infor mation Village, on the very same computer. And NC-LIVE, for in stance, is a source of both index ing databases and full-text data bases. But more about full-text later. Let's look at the basics of the difference. I know this will seem incredibly obvious to most readers, but for those who need just a bit more explanation, read on. A book is a fixed entity and usually has an index at the back covering the subject matter in that book. And you usually get a the Fast of the 40 days of Lent was preceded by a feast of several days during which time partici pants delivered themselves up to. voluntary madness, put on masks, clothed themselves like spectres, The Guilfordian clue to the subject matter in the title. The NC-PALS online cata log (remember to click on Guilford!) will help you locate the book you want, by author, title or subject, even keyword searching. Journal titles and holdings for those titles can also be found, but one cannot get to a specific article from there. Journals often contain many different articles on many sub jects in each issue, and can have a very general title (i.e., Journal of American History), so title clues are less helpful. An index at the back of each one would not suffice unless you wanted to spend your time reading separate indexes in multiple issues to find what was needed. That's where subject indexes (or indexes online that search by subject or keyword) come in very handy. They cover a broad subject area for a specific time period, and articles in that subject field are listed with citations for a num ber of different journals. You can check to see which of those we have in our collection and go look them up! [Here's another differ ence while you're looking things up: Books are "cataloged" and gave themselves up to Bacchus and Venus and considered all plea sure allowable. New Orleanians caught the enthusiasm of the youths and from 1827 to 1833. Mardi Gras each year saw more and more revelries, culminating in an annual Mardi Gras ball. In 1833 Ber nard Xavier de Marigny de Mandeville, a rich plantation owner, solicited a large amount of money to help finance an organ ; 7ed Mardi Gras celebration. It was not until 1837 however, that the first Mardi Gras parade was staged. The first description of a Mardi Gras pa rade is of a single ■£ * • shelved by call number and jour nals are shelved alphabetically by title.] Those not physically here can usually be ordered using in terlibrary loan in our Informa tion/Reference Department or clicking on the request feature in the online catalog. One more word about ar ticles, to shed a little light, and add more than a little complex ity. There is another category of them, relatively new on the infor mation scene, called full-text or sometimes full-image, depending on whether graphics are present. This category has, I think, caused some of the confusion. One can sometimes use an indexing tool such as NC-LIVE to search for and find articles in their entirety rather than simply a citation. It's a little bit like finding a book in the online catalog because you've found the whole thing. . . which makes it harder to see the differ ence between titles and articles. Are you thoroughly confused now? If so, stop by at the Infor mation/Reference Desk on the first floor or the Periodicals De partment on the lower level any weekday and get some help. It's an information jungle out there! float in 1839 which was a crude thing, but a great success. It is re ported that the float moved through the streets while the crowd roared hilariously. Since then Mardi Gras in New Orleans has been a definite success. It continued to grow, with additional organizations participating each year until the Carnival as we know it today was the result. There is no celebration in the world which is as much miscon strued as the New Orleans Mardi Gras. Laboring under a miscon ception, the vast majority of people outside of New Orleans believe that the New Orleans Mardi Gras is a celebration spreading over a period of a few days just before Ash Wednesday. In reality the New Orleans carnival is similar to the Fasching of Germany which be gins on the twelfth night after Christmas and continues until Shrove Tuesday. The expression Mardi Gras is from the French, meaning Fat Tuesday." Page 11
The Guilfordian (Greensboro, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
March 24, 2000, edition 1
12
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75