Simulating Hurrricane Katrina (Katrinasim)

VIRGO (Online Catalog)

• Basic Searching (5 minute Flash video)
• Advanced Searching (5 1/2 minute Flash video)
• Finding a Book in the Stacks (2 minute Quick Time movie)

Some things to remember when searching VIRGO:

• Start your research broadly, then narrow down specifically to what you want; don't be too specific too soon
• Use single quotes in VIRGO (but not most other databases) to search for phrases
• Use the $ truncation symbol to look for all forms of a word
• Use the Boolean connectors AND, OR and NOT along with ( ) to improve specificity
• Try various combinations of terms and synonyms to insure best coverage
• Omit the words A, AN and THE at the beginning of a title in all languages
• Search for authors' names in the form LASTNAME FIRSTNAME with no comma
• Remember that British English and American English sometimes spell the same word differently (e.g. CENTRE and CENTER) and use different words for the same thing (e.g. PETROL and GASOLINE) -- you must search both ways to find everything

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