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This guide has been designed to help students use the Lexington Public Library to do homework and research projects. Students working at home and students planning to come to the library can benefit from this guide. You will need a library card to access some of the materials.
Have a clear idea of your assignment, even if you haven’t selected a topic. Know when your assignment is due, and what kinds of sources you will need (books, magazine articles, encyclopedia articles, etc.). Try to visit the library as early as possible to scope out what is available and see if you will need to request materials from other branches or libraries.
The library staff is here to help you. They can show you how to use the catalogs and databases, point you to helpful materials, suggest how you might search to find the best sources available and talk you through your options. The librarians cannot do your homework for you, proofread your assignments or tell you what your assignment is.
Even if you are not at the library you can get help from a librarian. You can call telephone reference at (859)231-5520 or use e-mail reference to get answers to brief factual questions (like, when was Lincoln president?) or suggestions for your search.
The library’s catalog lists books and other materials in the library system. You can search by author, title, subject or keyword. By browsing through the books you find, you can learn general ideas about your topic through chapter headings and indexes. Other sources of information often can be found in the bibliographies or works-cited lists at the end of most books.
Once you select a book from the catalog, you can go get it from the shelves or place it on reserve if it is at another branch. In the Central Library, New and Popular books are located on the first floor. The second floor houses fiction, videos and DVDs, books on tape, music, personal computers, and the Young People’s Department.
The third floor is the Reference Department, which includes the database computers, periodicals and the Kentucky Room. The 4th Floor is the home of non-fiction, including the African-American collection, oversized books, biographies and the computer center.
LPL has several resources to help you obtain the materials you need, even if they are not owned by the library. OCLC’s Worldcat is an online database that can search for materials in thousands of libraries worldwide. The Kentucky Virtual Library’s catalog collection will allow you to search the catalogs of many Kentucky public and academic libraries. Once you locate an item, you can use Interlibrary Loan to have the item sent to Lexington Public Library. (This usually takes a week or so - one of the reasons it’s best to start your research early).
The periodicals department contains hundreds of magazines in print and on microfilm. You can use the online periodical indexes such as Infotrac’s General Reference Center Gold, EBSCO’s Student Research Center or OCLC’s ArticleFirst to locate articles appropriate for your subject. These databases also contain the full text of many magazine articles.
To find older magazine articles (before 1980), you may also wish to use the Reader’s Guide To Periodical Literature, which dates back to 1900. If the library does not own an article you need for your assignment, you may be able to obtain it through Interlibrary Loan (It can take a week or longer to get an article through ILL).
The reference department contains all of these types of materials including:
Several of the online databases may also be of help to you:
Using the Internet for research can be tricky. Websites aren’t the best source of information for most topics. While there are a lot of good websites out there, many have problems. Some common problems with web sites include:
Luckily for you, the library is always on the lookout for good web sites. We’ve collected and arranged a couple hundred of them by subject in our Internet Links section. There are a bunch more that we think will be especially helpful for homework assignments (for younger students) in our Homework Help section.
If you don’t find what you need there, the Scout Report, Internet Public Library and Librarian’s Index to the Internet are good, free websites for locating other websites with good information.
If none of the above websites work for you, you’ll probably want to use a search engine like Google or Alta Vista. Not all search engines are created equal. Some place the results of sites that pay them higher than good sites that don’t. To find out how your favorite search engine compares check Search Engine Showdown.
Check with your instructor to see which style guide you should use. The reference department has several popular style guides, including The Chicago Manual of Style, APA Guide and others. You can also check for style guides online at the Internet Public Library’s online style guides. The Kentucky Virtual Library also has a great writing guide to help you with actually putting together your research.
There are resources available to help you, even when the library is closed. Almost all of the databases in LPL’s database collection can be accessed at home using your library card. You can use these databases to find magazine articles, reference book articles, pamphlets and facts. All you need to do is enter your library card number and PIN number when prompted. Your PIN number is the last four digits of your phone number.
