Pre-Law LEAP Fall 2022

Today we are going to learn how to navigate the physical and and digital library. At the end of this session, you should be able to: 

1.) Get into groups.

2.) Go to Pre-Law LEAP library guide (congrats, you're here!)

3.) Search for the book Lorelei assigns your group in USearch (lib.utah.edu), talking through your process, challenges, and questions. Take note of icons and buttons you see that convey information about the item. 

4) Go into the library stacks and try to locate your book. If you can't find it, pick a different one from the same section of the stacks. 

5.) Document your process of searching online and in-person (refer to "Questions to ask yourself below") 

6.) Report out to class. 

BOOKS (Assigned to groups)

• Group 1 - Sex and the Constitution by Geoffrey R. Stone
• Group 2 - Steal this Book by Abbie Hoffman
• Group 3 - The Story of My Life  by Clarence Darrow
• Group 4 - The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform by John Curtis Samples
• Group 5 - Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
• Group 6 - A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume
• Group 7 - We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Group 8 - Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Group 9 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Group 10 - Brown v. Board of Education: its impact on public education by Dara Byrne
• Group 11 - The Myth of Judicial Activism: making sense of Supreme Court decisions by Kermot Roosevelt

Questions to ask yourself: How did I search? What did I find? Was it easy? Hard? Is the item available? How? In print? Online? Both? Is it open access or behind a paywall? How do you know? Did you have to go into a database to find it? How do you know? What information is available in the bibliographic record? Besides finding it, what can I do with it? Save it? Email it to myself or a friend? Find a citation? What's the difference between "Get It" and "View It"? If it's only available physically in the library, can I still get it this semester? How? 

1. Pick your search terms - use single words or short phrases. Think of synonyms. Keep adding to your list as you search and get a better idea of what you are looking for. 
   1. Example: Gun control, Gun regulation, Gun rights, School shootings, Firearms, National Rifle Association (OR NRA), Second Amendment, Background checks, Parkland, Columbine, Assault rifle, "Right to bear arms"
2. Put phrases in quotes (ex: "medical marijuana") 
3. Use truncation when appropriate - educa* will put up education, educate, and educator. homeless* will pick up homeless and homelessness. 
4. Use Boolean Operators - AND, OR, or NOT (ex: Pets NOT dogs; "voter disenfranchisement" AND "Civil Rights Act") 

1. Boolean Operator: AND Finds sources containing two or more ideas The database will only retrieve items containing both words AND narrows your search You can use AND many times in one search Example: electronic AND voting	Boolean AND
   Boolean Operator: OR Use OR when searching for synonyms OR tells the database that the words can be used interchangeably, so it will retrieve items containing either word OR broadens your search to include synonyms and related words You can use OR many times in one search Example: electronic OR internet OR web Nesting search terms using: parenthesis ( ) Make a complex search using both AND and OR by placing parentheses around synonyms so you don't have to repeat searches Nesting saves you time by allowing you to search multiple synonyms at once Example: (electronic OR internet OR web) AND (vote OR voting) - this cuts down on having to do multiple searches for the combinations of keywords	Boolean OR
   Boolean Operator: NOT Use NOT when you wish to exclude records from your search results  Example: pets NOT dogs Be careful when using NOT! The term you want may be present in an important way in results that also contain the word you wish to avoid