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Marge Peters . (630) 942-2337 . petersm@cod.edu . Office: HSC 3337
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 (LINC is one consortium catalog), 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:
Books and ebooks on Food and Culture
The Foodlover's Atlas of the World. General TX 355 .S 48 2002
You Eat What You Are: People, Culture and Food Traditions General GT 2850 .B37 1999
Dining Customs Around the World General GT 2850 .M67 1982
Culture and Customs of.. . A list of a series of books at the COD Library on various countries around the world.
Cultures of the World A list of a series of books at the COD Library on various cultures around the world.
For recipes, check books in the TX 700's and GT 2800's
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." To stay away from commercial site matches, add site: .gov (or .int, .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://video.yahoo.com. 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. Click on the thumbnail of videos you wish to see. Sometimes ads precede the content if on an advertiser-sponsored channel (Fox and others). YouTube videos may load slowly, if at all.
Use Google's advanced video search: http://video.google.com/videoadvancedsearch Enter words or a phrase to search. Click a choice for Language (English) and Duration (Short < 4 minutes probably best).
More at COD Streaming Video page: http://codlibrary.org/index.php?title=Video:_Search_Engines
