A Guide to the Libraries for CHES Students
Channel: University of Alabama Libraries
Date: 2020-09-02

In this video, you'll be introduced to some of the services & resources that The University of Alabama Libraries have to offer for students in the College of Human and Environmental Sciences. 

https://libraries.ua.edu
Transcript:

Hi, my name is Alex, I work at Gorgas Library, and today I'm here to introduce myself and talk about some of the services & resources that The University of Alabama Libraries have to offer. 
At Gorgas Library, I am a research librarian, so I spend a lot of my time helping students & faculty with research projects & research papers. 
More specifically I’m the research librarian for the entire College of Human Environmental Sciences, so I’m the person you can come to if you need any help with a research project, or if you just have a question about the libraries.  
So in the rest of this video, I'm going to show you how I can help, and what The University of Alabama Libraries can do for you. 
I can help with anything from refining a research question or topic…..to properly citing your sources. But what I probably spend the most time helping students do is find the sources they need for a paper. I can help you navigate your way through all the various search engines and databases you might need to use in order to find peer-reviewed journal articles and books and magazines and anything you might need.  
If you need that sort of help, it’s pretty easy to get in touch with me – my contact information is in all Human Environmental Sciences Research Guides…and all over the libraries website. 
To find me on the libraries website, you can start at lib.ua.edu, or go straight from mybama. If you’re on mybama, you can access most of our resources by clicking on the library tab.
On this page, you’ll see a number of links, and we’ll get back to a few of those in a second. But first, we’ll click on the staff directory. Once you’re here, you could search for my name, or just scroll down, but the easiest thing to do is to click on liaisons and scroll through till you get to Human Environmental Sciences. We have a research librarian for all of these majors, and I’m the one for HES. 
If you want to contact me, the easiest thing to do is send me a quick email. I might be able to answer your question there, or we can set up a meeting – either in-person or on zoom. 
Now that you know how to get in touch with me, let’s run through a few things on the libraries website and this research guide. 
Whether you’re on the libraries website or on the library tab on mybama, one thing you’ll notice is something called Scout. Scout is a good place to go if you need to quickly find a few sources for a paper. 
You can find peer-reviewed journal articles, books, magazines, streaming video – among other things. If you want to learn more about Scout, we have quick tutorials available through the libraries website.  
While Scout is a good starting point for your research, we also have over 500 databases to choose from.   
When you’re on the databases page, you might narrow your choices in a number of ways. One, you could search if you know what you’re looking for. Two, you can narrow by type of database – for example, streaming video, or eBooks. And finally, you can narrow by subject.
You can also find all of our research guides right here. Just scroll down to Human Environmental Sciences and you’ll see that we have guides for lots of individual classes. You’ll find my contact information and class-specific research resources on each of these guides.  
The last thing I’ll point out is the library chat box you’ll see on the middle of the page. On the library’s website it’s right here. If you have a quick question that you want answered in real time, just use the chat.  
I’ve thrown a lot at you today, but the library is more than just search engines & databases. At Gorgas Library, you’ll find that we have tons of study spaces, computers, and even a coffee shop. 
And that’s all we’ve got for this video. Hopefully you now have a better understanding of what the libraries have to offer students in The College of Human Environmental Sciences. If you have any questions or need any extra help, just ask your librarian.