Mini-encyclopedia research assignment  

Rohrbach Library is jam-packed with sources to help you with this assignment--both in our physical library and in our vast virtual library.

A great place to begin your searching (and, better still, your finding) is at the Information Commons page: infocommons.kutztown.edu   It offers one-click access to our most important research tools--including our "book catalog," which, truth be told, is about much more than just books!

Be aware that the many search options in the library's online catalog can save you time: you can, for example, use Set single limit to restrict your results to only videos, or only reference books.

When you have specific research interests, catalog searches on your topic can lead you toward sources that speak to them.  These might include magazines & journals, e-journals, and videos as well as books; all are listed in the online catalog.

Browsing the shelf area of a book that resonates with your interests is a potent discovery technique.  The catalog necessarily holds finite information about each book, so a concept that is invisible to a catalog search may well be in a book on the shelves.  Sometimes looking through the index at the back of several book is the shortest path to the information you seek.

Another powerful option is now available: When you find a possibly relevant book in the catalog, see if there's a link, near the bottom of the page, to "About This Book" information.  That takes you to Google Books, where you may be able to see the pages and do word searches within the full text of the volume.

Google Book Search and the Internet Archive include nearly ten million volumes, with full-text searching.  This enables you to find books using key words and phrases, instead of having to rely on titles, authors, or subject terms as is often the case with library catalogs.  Many of the books in these two collections are entirely or partially available to read online.