General Reference Services
Eileen Libby, the SSAd Librarian is available weekday mornings at the Circulation Desk to answer your questions and to help you select reference sources that contain the information you need. Assistance in using the public catalogs is also available, as well as advice about library research methods. Please don't hesitate to consult the Librarian whenever you have a problem with using the Library or a question about Library policies and procedures. Call us at (773) 702-1199 (2-1199 on campus phones) and e-mail us at ssad@lib.uchicago.edu .
Some Starting Points
The University's library catalog is open to the entire World Wide Web. Use this to find bibliographic descriptions and circulation information for everything in the University Library's catalog. A new tool, LENS (library enhanced navigation system), has a "word cloud" for broadening your search and "facets" (on the right of the screen) for focusing you search. LENS will also incorporate data from a variety of catalogs in addition to the University's own and will, as it is developed, begin to include social webware features such as record tagging. [Chicago Chronicle LENS announcement]
The Library provides a wide variety of electronic resources, both on the campus network and at workstations in the libraries. Networked information resources can be searched from home, office, or dorm, as well as in the Library. The Library website, (http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/) lets users connect directly to all networked databases offered by the Library. If you do not use a Web browser, please send an email to Reg-Reference@lib.uchicago.edu to inquire about other means of access.
Eileen Libby has compiled a list of Electronic Databases for Social Service & Social Work Topics . She ranks databases by their usefulness for working on topics.
The library maintains a web page on APA Style. An excellent tool for learning about citation styles is OCLC's "Site this Item" tool, available for any one of OCLC's databases, eg http://worldcat.org .
Doing Research from Off Campus?
You will need to know how to install and use a proxy bookmarklet for your web browser.
Additional Instruction
The Library provides a regular series of hands-on classes on the use of electronic resources, including a general overview, discipline, and some index specific classes.