Week 5

With the fifth week of Library Studies complete, I can say that I learned tons of valuable information that will help me throughout my college and life career. Before this class, I thought research would be difficult and hard to find information. I would probably be using Google for the rest of my life and trusting everything I found if it was what I needed. I never knew that there were such valuable resources out there that would give me accurate, and reliable information. In this class, I can now navigate the Penn State Libraries website efficiently. LionSearch is useful if you need to find anything on your specific topic. You can even narrow your search from journal articles to book reviews by checking boxes on the side of the screen. If you need to find a book in the Penn State library, you can just type in the title in LionSearch or you can search the CAT. On the CAT, you can navigate to your book easily by clicking on the compass button. If you don't want to do that, you can click the "I want it" button and a librarian will pull the book for you. You can also write down the call number and a librarian will help you find it. Either way you want to do it, a book will be found for you! The research guides section on the website is helpful as well. Guides can be found for any major and are full of information you are looking for. Databases can help you search for what you need, too. There are specific databases for each subject. This is a good way to find what you need fast instead of searching Google or a database with a wide range of subjects. We also talked about reliable sources a lot in LST. Scholarly articles can almost 100% of the time be trusted because they are made by universities and are edited and looked over by officials. Books with long, boring titles are usually more trusted than colorful books with simple facts, and websites like Twitter are beneficial too if they have a check mark of "official account" approval. One more important topic in this class involved copyright. It is extremely important to cite  and give credit to everything, even pictures. I always thought that pictures I found on Google were safe, but now I realize I need to get permission or cite them. Citing is now easy because this class showed me ways I can do it!

Overall, I am very glad I took this class! I am much more confident with researching and will have little to no trouble doing so in the future. I know that the librarians are always here to help in any way and I'm very thankful for that. I wish I took this class before English 015 in the summer because it would have came in handy, though I'm glad I have the knowledge for my other classes. Now, my eyes are open to new material, and new sources of research to find what I need to. Amanda and Bonnie were awesome instructors and I appreciate their time and effort they put into this class. I felt comfortable and welcome everyday. I hope everyone has a good rest of the year and luck in researching! (: Thank you Bonnie and Amanda!