Holmesglen TAFE: Industry Overview
Week Two: Jim Badger – Librarian Journal
Jim Badger gave an excellent and comprehensive insight into the library at Holmesglen as well as other tertiary libraries such as at universities.
An in-depth analysis was given about the significance of research projects and the resources available to us students. While researching you are given an assignment and you must therefore follow a procedure.
When considering the thesis of your topic do not merely do a Google search, much more is required of students. You must consult dictionaries, encyclopaedias and get a solid meaning and definition. For students will encounter highly technical terms which they do not understand.
As Holmesglen has a small library you might have to approach University libraries. This is possible through a Caval Card which allows you to borrow books from the seven universities in Melbourne.
You can consult the Library of Congress which is the largest library in the world. But remember that Americans think differently to us Australians. Therefore it is difficult to look up a subject and approach the Catalogue. Something like Trams of Melbourne would be difficult to find because it is such a vague topic. It is important to look up the key word e.g. Fragment of the title, one word of author’s name is enough for the key word in the library catalogue.
Jim Badger also gave students an excellent insight into the tools available in writing our assignments.
The Database at the Holmesglen library edits everything such as your information and only presents the most relevant information for student use.
The database (above) has research reports from film and radio scripts and articles from newspapers and journals from Australia.
An example of this is EBSCO host which is found in the Holmesglen TAFE Information Commons.
Jim Badger stressed the importance of citing information when writing your document or essay – proQuest is useful here.
ANZ Newstand provides information from Australian and New Zealand newspapers.
Finally, Jim Badger stressed the importance of making full use of the librarians and all the available resources for students. All the librarians are friendly, approachable and most of all helpful as they are professionals in their fields.
There are quite a few ways to approach the resources at Holmesglen Information Commons to research materials for your written assessment. Students can start with “Steps in Writing a Report” in the Research Guides sidebar of the IC Webpage. Click on (http://www.ic.holmesglen.vic.edu.au/). You then clarify the research you need, identify the key terms as you build a keyword list, look at the variety of available resources to evaluate the information found and make sure you keep a list of references. Begin with your Bibliography early. To do this students can check “Writing a Bibliography” in the “Research Guides” sidebar of the IC Webpage stated above.
An important area which needs to be stated is “Information of Literacy Skills” which is also found electronically at the Information Commons and is available to students. It is possible to start with “Advanced Electronic Searching Skills”. Firstly you state your information needed. For example… what are the characteristics to look for when purchasing a diamond?... then you identify a key word i.e. “Characteristics” and “purchasing” together with “diamond”… Thirdly you select synonyms or variations e.g. Characteristics with attributes, purchasing with buying and finally diamond with precious jewel/stone.
In the fourth step you combine keywords using “OR” e.g. characteristics or attributes. In the fifth step students must always check their spelling. For search engines will only return results that match your search. If you misspell words then only mis-spelled items on the web will be retrieved.