The Temple University Library catalog is an amazingly powerful tool for locating all kinds of information sources. More than just a catalog of the books sitting on our shelves, it also enables you to search across the 1100+ databases that Temple subscribes to. This means you can search in one place to access millions of books, articles, and audiovisual resources in both physical and electronic formats.
For this class, the most efficient way to locate suitable resources will be to search in the library catalog. There may be other assignments for other classes where your professor or a librarian may advise you to go to a specific database and search within that specific database, but for this assignment and this class, the library catalog should suffice.
So, to get started, you will go to the TUJ gateway to the catalog at https://www.tuj.ac.jp/library
From there, searching consists of three basic steps:
Step 1: Choose the appropriate tab
Step 2: Enter the search terms or search string you developing in the "Preparing to Search" section
Step 3: Filter your results
Choosing a Tab
The search bar on the TUJ Library homepage has several tabs, and each tab performs a different type of search. In many cases, you will need to repeat your search in more than one of the tabs in order to see the full variety of materials available to you. Here is how the tabs work:
Tab 1: TUJ Library
Searching from this tab will locate physical things that are here in our library at the Tokyo campus. If you want to find books, magazines, journals, DVDs, etc. that you can hold in your hands and look at in person, use this tab. Most, but not all, of the physical things in our collection can be checked out (= borrowed) if you'd like to take them home.
Tab 2: Online Books & Media
Searching from this tab will locate electronic things that can be accessed online. If you want to find ebooks or online videos, this is the tab to use.
Tab 3: Articles
Searching from this tab will locate articles, book chapters, and other electronic resources that exist as portions of larger works. Articles can be from newspapers, magazines, or scholarly journals, all of which are collectively called "serial" publications because they are produced in a series and at regular time intervals (daily, weekly, monthly, annually, etc.) Most, but not all, articles published in scholarly journals go through a process called "peer-review", which ensures that other academic experts in the relevant subject area have reviewed the author's work and approved it for publication.
Tab 4: Everything
Although it may be very tempting to jump immediately to the all-powerful "Everything" search, this is not a recommended strategy. The reason is that searching from this tab will also include all of the physical items held by the other campuses of Temple University, which means your results list will show lots of things that are not available to us here in Japan or online. There are some cases where using the Everything tab is helpful, but for this assignment in this class, it is not likely to be very useful.
In many cases, your best strategy will be to repeat your search in tabs 1, 2, and 3 to make sure you're seeing all of the resources that are relevant to your topic and available to you either physically or digitally.
Filtering Your Results
Once you've decided which tab(s) to use, you'll simply enter the search terms or search string you developed earlier, and then click the "Search" button.
If you get no results or very few results:
If you get way too many results:
If you get results but they aren't relevant:
Temple University Japan Campus Library 1-14-29 Taishido, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan 154-0004
Tel: 03-5441-9867 Fax: 03-5441-9811 Email: tujlib@temple.libanswers.com Web: https://www.tuj.ac.jp/library