Orientation To The Tisch Homepage

Welcome to Tisch Talks, Tisch Library’s ongoing audio magazine series. You’re listening to the second installment of the series. During the next 5 minutes you will take a guided tour of Tisch’s website.
The Tisch Library website address is www.library.tufts.edu/tisch . I’ll wait a minute while you go to that site if you would like to follow along on your own computer. The site is made up of 4 sections, all of which we will take a quick look at. We’ll start with the largest section, the 5 areas called Searching, Research Assistance, Borrowing, Other Services and About Us.
The Searching section is jam packed with resources. Among the tools you’ll find:

• the catalog to find books, videos, sound recordings and computer software,
• the databases and articles when you want to find a journal, magazine or newspaper article on any topic,
• the research guides by subject when you need suggestions for starting your research
• the general information sources when you need to look up a phone number, the T schedule, the conversion rate from dollars to euros, and tons of other quick facts
• the new acquisitions list to see what has been added to the catalog during the past month. The list also lets you set up RSS feeds to really keep up!

The Research Assistance section is your main help for using library resources. You can think of it as representing the reference desk when we’re not around to answer your questions in person. Check out this section to:

• Make an appointment with the librarian who reports to your department or major
• Sign up for any of our research skills workshops
• Bookmark our undergraduate or graduate/faculty research guide

English 1 and 2 students will benefit especially from the material found in the First Year Writing Program part of the Undergraduate Guide. Here you will find great starting points for the papers you will have to do in these classes. And don’t forget to take a look at the Research Paper Navigator. Not only will it give you suggestions for how to start your research, it also will plan your time for you and keep you ahead of your deadlines.

The Borrowing part of the website gives you access to your account so you can see what books you have checked out and any fines that have accrued. If you choose, you can set up your reading history so you can keep track of ALL the books, videos, etc you’ve checked out. The other important area in this section is Borrowing from Other Libraries. Pay particular attention to ILLiad and the BLC (Boston Library Consortium) Virtual Catalog. These sites let you request books, videos and articles (ILLiad only) from other libraries when we either don’t have the material or our copy is unavailable.

The Other Services and About Us sections are pretty self explanatory so we’ll skip over them and move to the next main portion of the website, the News, events and exhibits. This section is updated weekly and you can bookmark it if you‘d like, by adding, to the end of the Tisch homepage website whatsnew/neenr.htm. In other words, http://www.library.tufts.edu/tisch/whatsnew/neenr.htm . You can see what’s been new in the library since spring of 2003 when we first began this section.

The third section of the website, the Search this Site box (in the upper right corner) is used to find buried areas of the website, not to search for books or articles. For example, if you know we have some information on RefWorks on the website but can’t find it, do a search for RefWorks in the box and you’ll immediately find what you are looking for.

The final section of the website is the Quick Links on the right hand side. All the links on this bar are elsewhere on the site, but we’ve pulled them out because they’ve shown their value. If you’re looking for work, pay attention to the student jobs link.

This is a good place to remind you how to get in touch with us if you have additional questions. Under Ask a Librarian are links to contact us by phone and email. Additionally, don’t hesitate to stop by and see us in person, or IM us by adding Tischlibrarian (all one word) as a contact in your favorite IM (except gmail) program.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of Tisch Talks. We invite your questions at any time. Don’t hesitate to be in touch!