The Library Homepage Explained
www.nicholls.edu/library
Important information on the Ellender Memorial Library Home Page includes links to the following:
The Library's Hours, including Holiday and weekend hours.
LOUIS and The Louisiana Union Catalog, which allows researchers to search all of Louisiaina's academic online catalogs simultaneously. Thus, you can find a book at a library near you.
The Library's FAQ Page, where common patron questions are answered.
iLink, the library's Online Public Access Catalog, which allows for a Simple Search and a Power Search.
The Electronic Research Databases Page, which contains databases in subjects such as business, chemistry, psychology, education, nursing, and agriculture, as well as generic databases for current events and news articles.
NetLibrary Accounts and E-Books, where students are given access to over 38,000 electronic titles which can be found via an iLink search or by searching NetLibrary directly.
Information Literacy Tutorials, which provide information on various research courses taught through the library, as well as tutorials on plagiarism and copyright.
The Library Terminology Page, which provides definitions for often used library terms.
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Finding Books in iLINK
Ellender Memorial Library's Online Public Access Catalog is called iLink. To search for books, videos, periodicals, etc., simply click on the link from the library's homepage. You may click on either iLink or on the iLink Power Search. The simple search allows you to search by author, title, keyword, subject, or periodical title. If you know the author or title of a source, or it is a simple keyword search, such as Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Kate Chopin, Awakening, The Woman Warrior, feminism or literary criticism, then the simple search will suffice.
However, if you wish to compose a complex search, such as finding books about feminism in Kate Chopin, or the treatment of nature in romantic poetry, or books about Christianity and literature, or finding poetry videos about William Carlos Williams, you would be better off using the Power Search. For example, to find either of the first two, you could try either of the following:
word or phrase=nature AND word or phrase=romantic poetry
word or phrase=nature AND word or phrase=romantic poets
word or phrase=feminism AND word or phrase=Kate Chopin
word or phrase=feminism AND word or phrase=literature
The important thing to remember is that searching effectively involves coming up with a search strategy, and that strategy will probably involve using various synonyms and similar terms to maximize effectiveness.
By the same token, if you wanted to find videos about William Carlos Williams in our library, you might try the following:
word or phrase=William Carlos Williams AND type=audio-visual
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Finding Out What Books Exist
Whenever you get zero hits in iLink, or whenever you need to find out if an academic library other than Ellender has a book, video, or periodical (a scholarly journal or a magazine) in its collection, you can use the LOUIS link off of the library's homepage. Scroll down the menu on the left hand side of the page, and you will see the link for LOUISiana Libraries Catalog. This link will take you to the Welcome to the LOUISiana Union Catalog page. In the top left corner, and on the bottom left, you will see a link that allows you to search the Union Catalog.
This means that you can simultaneously search every academic library catalog in Louisiana at once. To do so, once you have clicked on the link, scroll down to the bottom of the libraries list on the right, and check the box which says All Libraries. By the same token, you can check off only certain libraries. Once you have done this, scroll back up to the top left of the page, and type in your search term(s). Make sure you click on the correct type of search for your term, with the choices of Author, Title, Subject, and Keyword. Your results list will have blue hyperlinks to the catalogs of libraries that have the item you are looking for.
For example, if you were looking for books by the author Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Choke, Lullaby), you would type in Palahniuk, Chuck and click where the grey box says Author.
By the same token, you can search for books about Kate Chopin. For example, you can type in Kate Chopin AND feminism, or Kate Chopin AND imagery, or Kate Chopin AND characterization, and by running a keyword search, get a list of books about any of those topics.
The best database in which to find out what books exist on the subject is WorldCat, which searches for books and materials in libraries worldwide. Remember that the advantage of WorldCat over Books in Print, which can be accessed through the website of The State Library of Louisiana, is that WorldCat finds only books that are already published and housed in libraries. The WorldCat Advanced Search screen will allow you to limit your search by language, number of libraries, audience (Adult vs. Juvenile), content (Fiction vs. Non-Fiction), and year of publication. Limiting your results to those books held in 500 or more libraries will guarantee that you are pulling popular titles, which will be sorted according to their popularity.
You might want to try as one of your search terms the keyword terms Kate Chopin and gender roles, or any of the exmaple searches discussed above.
Finally, you can request a book which Ellender does not own by filling out an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Form. Any of these books that the library does not own can be accessed through Interlibrary Loan, providing you have set up your account. The process of getting abook this way is almost always free, and takes only one to two weeks.
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Using E-Books at NetLibrary
Ellender Memorial Library has access to over 38,000 electronic titles through netLibrary. Most of the library's netLibrary books can be found by searching iLink. You may also search netLibrary directly. But to check-out or read netLibrary books, you'll first need to create a netLibrary account. You must use this link to create an account from off-campus.
NetLibrary is optimized for IE 5.5 and above, Netscape 6.2 and above, and Other Gecko from Mozilla 1.1. To access netLibrary, you should update your browser with the latest version to take full advantage of the many new features now available from netLibrary. After April 2, 2004, you will no longer be able to access netLibrary without an upgraded browser.
Visit this link for updates about Nicholls' netLibrary accounts.
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