Using the CCS Library

Using the CCS Library

[And Its Partner Libraries]

Really boring stuff that you really, really need to know

About the Library

The CCS Library is in the basement of the School at 60 Maryland, but it’s
certainly not what you’d expect from a basement. The Library is full of light,
books, useful information, and the Volunteer Librarian (VL) is a really nice
person. (“Yes, I am,” she said modestly.)
The books, tapes, etc., in the Library are for you to use, wherever you’re located.
All you need to do is phone (204-783-4490) or email ([email protected]) and
the books will be sent to you. You even get a Return Postage label, so you can
mail them back for free. (Hooray!)
The Library is currently run by the VL, who is in for as many hours a week as she
can manage. Currently, the VL is Bonita R. (Bunny) Cobb. She’s in on Tues-
days, Thursdays, and Fridays. However, hours can change at a moment’s notice
(ahem).
The collection is mainly books, with a few audio cassettes. There are roughly
4000 items in the library. The Library also subscribes to several journals and
newsletters. Subject matter ranges from Psychology to Ecology to History to
Pastoral Theology. The emphasis is on items that will support the School’s
curriculum.

Partner Libraries

CCS also has a number of partner libraries, to wit:

• University of Winnipeg
• Canadian Mennonite College
• William and Catherine Booth College

As a CCS student, you have access to books from those libraries, as well as
from the Library at CCS.
To borrow books, etc., from any of these libraries, you may either go to each one
in person, or you may ask the VL to borrow the materials and send them to you
(Inter-Library Loan). Fines, lending periods, etc., will depend on the policies of
each library.
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Your Library Account

The key to using the CCS Library and its Partners is your Library Card. This card
has your Library Account Number barcode on it, so don’t lose it.

You need the Account Number to borrow books and to access your Library
Account online.

Before you can access your Account, you need to create a PIN. Here’s how:

1. Go to the online catalogue Home Page:

http://cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/find/opac/index.cfm

2. Place your cursor on the My Cybrary tab near the centre top of the
page. A drop-down menu will, like, drop down.

3. Click on Login.

4. MyCybrary Login will come up.

5. Below and to the right of the two boxes, click on Create Your PIN.

6. A very bare-looking page will come up.

7. Enter your Library Account barcode – all 14 digits of it – in the

barcode box.

8. Since you don’t have a PIN, leave that box blank and click on
Submit.

9. The New PIN page will come up. Enter your barcode again. Then
enter your chosen PIN. It has to be between 4 and 8 characters
and can be letters or numbers or a combination of both.

10. Enter your PIN again. Click on Submit.

11. To end your session, click on Logout.

Now you can use your barcode and PIN to access your Cybrary account. You
can use this account to see if you have any books that are coming due, or are
(Gasp!) overdue. You can also renew your books online, if they’re not overdue
or On Hold for someone else.
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Finding the Books You Want

Lovely. Books to help with your assignments. But how do you get your hot little
hands on them?

The process is both straight-forward and complex. (Eh?!) Here’s the straight-
forward part:
1. Use the online catalogue to find the books you want to borrow. The
catalogue is available at http://cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/find/opac/index.cfm
This catalogue lists all the books available from all of the Partner Libraries,
as well as from CCS.
2. Write down the title and the entire call number of each book you want.
Also note which library has that book: CCS, UW, CMU, or WCBC.
3. Email ([email protected]) or phone (204-783-4490) the VL and give
her the information. Or, if you’re in Winnipeg, come to the Library in
person.
4. The VL will send you the books you want (unless they’re already out, of
course).

Seems simple enough. Where’s the complex part?

Searching the Online Catalogue

The hardest part of this whole process is searching the catalogue to find the
books you want to borrow. (Dang! You knew there was a catch!)
You should probably set aside an hour sometime in the near future to go to the
online catalogue’s Home Page and just play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It will use up
precious time, and Time is a non-renewable resource.
But it will save you precious time – and frustration – in the future. So just do it.

So here’s how to use the catalogue.

Step 1. Go to the catalogue’s Home Page

http://cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/find/opac/index.cfm
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The screen will look like this:

Notice the box labelled “Enter search words”. Also notice the drop-down menu
next to it. There are several choices in the drop-down menu. The ones you will
probably use at first are:

• Keyword
• Author
• Title

Later on, you may want to use the options of searching by Subject Heading and
by Advanced Keyword.
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Step 2. Decide on how you want to search.

• If you know the author of the book(s) you want, the search terms will be
the author’s name. Enter last name, first name in the “Enter search
terms” box – no capital letters required. Choose Author from the drop-
down menu. Click on Search, or, hit Enter.

• If you know the title of the book, or the first few words, then enter the title
in the box and choose Title from the drop-down menu. Again, no capital
letters are required. Also, don’t enter the word The, A, or An at the
beginning of the title.

N.B. Title search doesn’t work unless you know the first words. Middle or
last words won’t work.

If you don’t know authors or titles, you will want to start with a keyword search. If
this is the case, you’ll have some work to do before you begin. (Nooo!! Arghh!
Can’t I just type in some words?!) Sorry. This is like changing your car’s oil filter:
you can spend time now or you can waste time later.

Step 3. Organize your Keyword search

If you’ve used Google or Yahoo or Ask, you already know that searching by
Keyword can result in thousands of “hits” – many of them not very useful. In
Library-ese these are called “false hits”. The same thing can happen in a
catalogue search.

To minimize the number of false hits, and to maximize your search, you need to
spend some time deciding on which keywords to use and how to type them into
the search box.

You obviously have some idea of the topic you want to search for, e.g. pastoral
care for the elderly or the issue of poverty. Before you sit down at the computer,
you need to think about your topic.

• First, pull the keywords out of your topic, e.g., “pastoral care” and
“elderly” OR “poverty” and “world economy”

• Next try to narrow down your topic. Do you want to look at your
topic as it relates to a specific part of the world? A specific time-
frame? In the 2nd example, you might want to look at the topic as it
relates to women, or a certain age group, or other social grouping.
Add these words to your Keyword list.
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• Try to think of synonyms for each of your Keywords. OK, a

synonym for “pastoral care” is a little tough, but there are several
terms that can be used in place of “elderly”, for example. Add
these synonyms to your Keyword list.

Put your Keywords into proper Keyword search “language”.

In this particular catalogue “Multiple words will be searched as a

phrase.” So to search the phrase “pastoral care”, just key in the
phrase. You don’t need to use quotation marks.

Also in this particular catalogue, “Use ‘AND’ to specify ALL words”.

To search for works about the effects of poverty on African women
key in: poverty AND women AND Africa.

This catalogue also seems to recognize the word OR to expand

your search. Some examples of the use of OR:

seniors OR elderly OR aged

To really get down to brass tacks, you can use parentheses to

“embed” part of your search.

Pastoral care AND (seniors OR elderly OR aged)

(Women OR children) AND poverty
Children AND (poverty OR labor OR labour)

Finally, you can also use “truncation” to expand your search. The
punctuation used in this catalogue is an asterisk * . For example,
keying in the search terms Canad* will cause the catalogue to
search for the words Canada and Canadian. Be careful with this. If
you searched for ag*, for example, you would get not only “aged”
and “aging”, but also “agriculture”, “aggregate”, and “aggravation”.

• Once you have your Keywords put into proper language, you’re
ready to enter your search terms in the box. Keyword is already
selected, so just click on Search or hit Enter.

• If you need help putting together your search terms, please

don’t hesitate to contact the VL.
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Interpreting the Search Results

You’ve entered your search terms, chosen the type of search from the drop-down
menu, and hit Enter. The online catalogue does its thing and voilá, a page pops
up with a list of hits. The results page will look like this:

Take a careful look at this page. Notice that your search found 9 pages of hits.
Also notice that it shows the books that are available in the “Entire Collection”.
These are not just the books at CCS. Look at the drop-down menu for all the
collections that are included.

If you want to see what’s available at CCS only, click on the drop-down menu
and select Centre for Christian Studies. Then click on Search.
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Here’s one of the records from the list above:

2 Women and poverty / edited by Barbara C. Gelpi ... [et al.]. --

Main Stacks (UW), Centre for Christian Std. ; HQ 1381 W63 1986 ; AVAILABLE 1986

This brief record tells you that this book is available from both the UW Library
and the CCS Library. It includes the title, the editor, the call number, and the
date of publication. It also tells you that the book is available for borrowing.
To see the full catalogue record, click on the title. This is what comes up.

Again, this record shows the title, editor, date, and call number. It also shows the
availability of each copy.

The really useful part of the full record is the list of Subject Headings. Each
heading is “live”. That is, if you click on a heading, you will get a list of all the
books that have been assigned that same heading.
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If your Keyword search comes up with a useful book, click on the Subject
Headings to find similar resources.

Checking Out Books

(Oh, good grief! Doesn’t this section ever end?!)

Hang in there, folks. We’re almost done.

Once you’ve found the books you want to borrow, phone or email the VL. Be
sure to give her the title, the call number, and the collection (CCS, UW, CMU,
CWBC) for each book.

If you email her, please include your full name, in case there are other students
with – like -- the same first name.

The books will be mailed to you post haste –or Canada Post, whichever comes
first. They will be sent Library Book Rate, which can be sloooow.

If you are in Winnipeg, it will help keep expenses down if you come to the CCS
Library to borrow CCS books, and go to the other libraries to borrow their books.
Ditto for returning them.

Important Rules and Regs

Books will be lent for a period of 6 weeks.

If you want to renew your books, you can do it online via your Cybrary account,
or you can ask the VL to do it for you. Please contact the VL BEFORE the due
date. Once they’re overdue, it becomes a hassle to renew them. Also you will
receive nagging email messages telling you to get those suckers back home.

Please note that the due date means “due back at the Library”, not “due to be
put in the mail”. Please mail your books back at least 1 week before the due
date to make sure they get back on time. As mentioned, Library Book Rate is
dead slow.

Also please note that once a library fine has been assessed, the system won’t let
you borrow any more books until the fine has been paid. Fines are 50 cents per
day per book, to a maximum of $15.00 per item. If you go way past the due date,
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you will be fined the maximum $15.00 plus replacement cost, plus $10.00
processing fee per book.

Overdue notices are sent out by email, so please check your email regularly.

Also please check your personal library account information regularly so you can
tell if any books are coming due, and either return them or renew them.

Contact Information

If you need any help with anything connected to the Library, please don’t hesitate
to contact the Volunteer Librarian. She will get back to you as quickly as her
hours allow.

Phone: 204-783-4490

Email: [email protected]