Thursday, November 8, 2007

Research Log Entry 11/8/07

1. a) The nothing that is : a natural history of zero
Kaplan, Robert, 1933-
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2000
LOCATION CALL NO. STATUS
Book Stacks QA141 .K36 2000

b) Couldn't find any reference stacks, I tried multiple searches.

2. The nothing that is : a natural history of zero
Kaplan, Robert, 1933-
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2000
LOCATION CALL NO. STATUS
Book Stacks QA141 .K36 2000

3. a). I went into the catalog and for my book stack I went to word catalog search and did history of zero and that was very easy because I found several books on the subject and had no trouble. But finding a reference book on it was impossible, I tried every type of search with every type of keyword and couldnt find anything.

b). I had a problem finding any source from reference stack, I couldnt find any search that could yield a source from the reference stack.

c) Well I found that if you try different ways to word a search and tried using titles rather than phrases sometimes, you may get a more broad search but sometimes it may give you exactly what your looking for.

1 comment:

Aline said...

In item 1, you need to look for a broad term, e.g. "mathematic*" (to pick up works with the term mathematic or mathematics) combined with a limit to "reference collection." That will provide you with a list of mathematics items, including encyclopedias with some entries of relevance.

Item 3 c) is exactly the right point. Trying different approaches, tailored to the sources you are searching, helps you to gather the most relevant results.

I hope that things are more under control and that you've found that you are still fully enrolled in class.