Library Hours
Monday - Thursday: 8:00am-6:00pm
Friday: 8:00am-1:30pm
Saturday & Sunday: Closed
Contact the Library
Email: library@octech.edu
Phone: (803) 535-1262
Location: Building B, 2nd Floor
For free research consultations with a librarian, use this link:
or contact the library at library@octech.edu
Remember:
Use the Owl at Purdue for help with citations and formatting.
Each of our databases will provide the APA citation for each article.
AHS 119 - Health Careers
Best Bets - Databases
Use these databases to find information about health careers.
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new windowProvides access to full text of hundreds of highly regarded and popular titles. And Credo brings the facts alive with images, sound files, animations, and much more. Find speedy, simple answers and authoritative, in-depth articles.
- Ferguson's Career Guidance Center This link opens in a new windowFeatures expertly researched, detailed content on more than 140 industries and more than 1,000 professions, with current information on earnings, employment trends, job requirements, and essential skills. Learn more about a career or take a career interest assessment to find a career that might suit you.
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowStreaming service providing academic, career-related, and educational videos. Contains a large collection of videos covering a wide range of academic topics.
- Vocational & Career Collection This link opens in a new windowProvides full-text coverage for trade and industry-related periodicals to meet a wide variety of vocational and technical research needs. Full text access to over 330 trade and industry-related periodicals.
- USAJobsGovernment job listings- you can sort and filter according to location, occupation, and experience.
Best Bets - Books
Use these book resources to find health career information.
- Ebook Central This link opens in a new windowA collection of eBooks ranging across all academic subjects. eBook Central gives students and faculty seamless and immediate access to the eBooks they need.
- EBSCO Academic Collection This link opens in a new windowA collection of multidisciplinary eBooks representing a wide range of academic subjects.
- Online Catalog (Books)Find books, ebooks, dvds, and videos to stream
- PASCAL DeliversRequest print books from any academic library in South Carolina and receive them in just a few days.
- Fact Check.OrgA reliable fact-checking website.
- Media BiasA reliable site that ranks bias of information based on a comprehensive scale. This is an excellent source which addresses current social media campaigns, but also ranks resources such as websites, news organizations, etc.
- University of Michigan Social Media rankerThe University of Michigan has created an "Iffy" quotient that ranks information on social media websites.
- SnopesAnother fact-checking website, Snopes is another resource that attempts to rapidly address misinformation as it begins to spread.
- PolitifactA fact-checking website primarily focused on politics (as the name suggests). They are highly transparent in not only their process, but also their funding.
Websites
Use these websites for authoritative information about specific health careers.
- Bureau of Labor StatisticsProvides a ‘snapshot’ of national data obtained from different BLS surveys and programs including state, county, and metropolitan area data.
- Career OnestopA source for career exploration, training and job hunting. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor.
- I Made ItCareers achievable through South Carolina’s technical college system.
- Occupational Outlook HandbookThe OOH details the duties, education, training, pay, and outlook for hundreds of careers.
- O*Net OnLineIncludes information on the required skills, abilities, knowledge, work, and interests for over 900 occupations.
Most professions have associations that certify and create guidelines for career paths. For example, physical therapists have the American Physical Therapy Association. Try searching for your career and its related professional association.
Materials from Library Orientation
-Bibliographies take a lot of time, and attention-to-detail which can be intimidating and frustrating
-Bibliographies appear at the end of the paper, but conversely, they should be the FIRST part of the paper you work on.
-If you keep an organized and annotated bibliography (and this does not have to be a stressful, my-instructor-will-grade-this process) you can save yourself an enormous amount of time and effort. Start now, and you will wonder why you ever wrote a paper without doing this.
- ZoteroAn open-source citation tool. There is an available Chrome plug-in, and the personal library available on the cloud makes saving and accessing resources simple. The interface is more user-friendly than Mendeley or Endnote, and it beats Easybib in that all citation formats are free.
- Zotero step-by-step download instructionsScreen shots with step-by-step instructions to download Zotero to your laptop (for windows).
Always evaluate your resources, regardless of format, and remember:
Currency
Relevance
Authority
Accuracy
Purpose
Remember that information literacy is a process just like regular literacy- the same way that you developed your vocabulary by using a dictionary to look up the meaning of new words, it's up to you to determine if you are looking at a reliable resource.
- Check Media Bias:Another tool that you can look at to determine the reliability of a resource.