- (630) 942-3364
- Ask a Librarian
- IM (askcod1)
Marge Peters . (630) 942-2337 . petersm@cod.edu
Find a topic in books and videos in the Library
Click on COD Library Catalog (http://lrc.cod.edu)
Do a SUBJECT search on your specific topic such as hot peppers, potatoes, chocolate... If you want more titles to choose from, use LINKIn to get fast delivery of titles from our partner libraries. If there is not enough material, broaden your search with these topics:
Because of the organization of the Library of Congress system, some of your books will be in the QK section for botany, others in the S section for agriculture, still others in the TX cooking section.
Can't find it here? Check out other libraries' holdings!
Under Library Catalogs, we have links to the catalogs of most of the major college libraries and public library collections in the area. See our guide to using area college libraries.
Try Suburban Library System (SWAN) and DuPage Library System (2 different catalogs: LINC or Magic), Wheaton Public Library, Naperville Public Library, Schaumburg Township Library... Your public library card (but not your COD Library Card) will let you check out books from any of these public libraries.
Reference books have good stuff!
The Library has a number of excellent references for food production and other topics:
Find magazine and journal articles
Each of these databases has a slightly different way of searching . Most allow you to limit to ONLY full text articles, only scholarly journal articles, and to a particular time frame.
Use the Internet
Yahoo is an example of a human-indexed directory of the internet, along with search engine features http://dir.yahoo.com. Try Science > Agriculture or Society and Culture> Food and Drink
Look for category matches BUT you will find a lot of commercial sites trying to sell you seeds, supplements and food. For some topics (tobacco, hemp/cannabis, etc.) there will be advocacy sites both pro and con.
Search engines , such as Google, or Ask.com match key words via software programs called "robots" or "spiders". See links from Library Home Page. Most programs only require the entry of all terms wanted--it only returns pages that include all of your search terms. For a better search, use quotation marks ("....") around phrases: "chile peppers " or "chili peppers." (look at advanced search to see how to eliminate matches for "red hot" so you don't get the musical group Red Hot Chili Peppers.) To stay away from commercial site matches, add site: .gov (or .edu or .org)
Be judgmental about what you find on the Web. Try to find out: Who put this site up? Do I know that they have expertise in this area? Are they affiliated with a university, research institution, or governmental body?
Need more information? Go to the Library's Evaluating Web Sites page
Search for streaming video
Go to Yahoo at http://www.yahoo.com. Change search format to video. Enter term(s)you want presented in video. Be sure to watch the timing --some of these streaming videos are over one hour in length.
Go to Blinkx at http:/www.blinkx.com and type in term(s) you wish to match. Notice that you will match video, radio and podcast presentations, with many links to British news sources as well as American. Be sure to look for a eye symbol that shows that streaming video is available. Sometimes ads precede the content you want if on an advertiser-sponsored channel (Fox and others).
More at COD Streaming Video page: http://codlibrary.org/index.php?title=Video:_Search_Engines
