Downloadable version: Transcript of Library Website Video

This UBC Library tutorial introduces the library homepage. You can use the navigation buttons at the bottom of the media player to stop, or pause at any time.

You’ll find the homepage at www.library.ubc.ca.

The grey menu bar here appears at the top of most library webpages. Click each item to open a menu with links to further related information. Notice that this item corresponds to this column of links here. The top menu has links to more related pages, while the Use the Library column just contains quick links to the most commonly used pages. The same is true of the other columns on the page – if you click on the header for the column it’ll take you to a portal which has all the links from the menus in the grey bar.

Moving down the page you’ll notice a large Search box. You can jump right into your research by typing your keywords here in the General tab. This searches through the Library’s print and e-books, online articles, government documents, maps and more. It’s a great place to start when you’re beginning your research and need to get a sense of how much and what types of information is available on your topic.

The other tabs limit your search to specific material types - For example, if you click on Books and Media you’ll be searching only the Library’s catalogue – you won’t find specific journal articles or database information here, but if you’re looking for a specific book it can be faster to search in this tab than in the General tab.

Click the indexes and databases tab if you want to open a specific database that you know the name of – you won’t find books or journal articles if you search here – and finally the journal titles tab is the one to use if you are looking for a specific issue of a journal that you know the name of. Note: newspapers and magazines are considered journals too – so if you’d like to see what sort of access the Library has for the New York Times – click the tab, type in the title and click search.

Back at the Library homepage, if you scroll down the page you’ll see the hours and locations for all of the Library’s branches, our workshop and events calendar and back up here at the top the latest news and highlights from the Library.

In this tutorial we’ve explored some features of the UBC Library homepage. To learn more about the Library check out the webguides in our Research help portal, the other tutorials in our playlist at the UBC YouTube channel or contact a librarian with your questions.