IAM Guide to the Library
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Welcome! The Columbia College Chicago Library is a fantastic resource for learning.
This handy wiki guide to the Columbia College Chicago Library has resources both for faculty and for students who need to use library services for research and for learning. Since you are looking at this IAM wiki page, you might want to know how to use the library from home or be looking for material on reserve for your course by your instructor. Otherwise the handy guide below is linked to parts of the library's website, and the links below follow much of the same structure as the library's fine website, with a few hints and tips for students and researchers interested in Interactive Arts and media related topics.
what's the URL? www.lib.colum.edu
The Columbia College Chicago Library Web Site
How to do Research using the library databases
ITS ALL MENTAL When faced with a search engine of any sort, whether it has a full-text indexed or not; one should pause for a moment and reflect upon how word searches are actually formulated in one's mind. Sit down and write a list of words that will be relevant for your topic. You can refer back to your word tree and makes notes as you search the catalogs. This process is called abstraction. Let's say you want to find information on Video Art. Well the first order of business is to research what there is to research about! You might want to make an idea tree of what you already know, by making a list of words. Such as the following;
- video art
- Nam June Paik
- video festivals
- video installation
If you plug those different phrases into a search engine (database) you are guaranteed to get different results. The process by which you evaluate the results, make choices, and learn new search terms is called triangulation. The repeated process of abstraction and triangulation yields the best research.
The Columbia College Library website has many handy databases useful for searching its vast collections (Collection Overview). In addition to finding Books you'll also find links to full-text Articles as well as article abstracts in various Journals and Newspapers as well as other scholarly texts (all article databases). Interested in Movies on DVD to show in class or for casual viewing? There are also Musical selections on CD available. How about Image databases? The library even has Special Collections for those hard-to-categorize objects like artists' books.
All about the Library's great Services
In addition to the Columbia College Chicago Library's fine databases, the library offers various services for Students and for Faculty. There are instructions for faculty for Course Reserves, so that faculty can make certain course reserve print materials available at the library on a walk-in basis or eReserves for materials that are retrievable online. Another fantastic research service for faculty and students alike is a process known as Interlibrary Loan. If you know of a book or specific article that is not available through our library, one can usually borrow it from another library through the library's interlibrary loan program. Note that not all materials are available and the process can take some time, but it is in invaluable resource for persons researching certain hard-to-find materials.
Help! and Ask a Librarian <--- great service! (Even has chat).
