From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. [music] >>COREY: Hey there. My name's Corey and I have quite the story for you. To start with, I was watching TV a while back with my eccentric Uncle Jimmy. He's been getting into the History Channel lately. And now he's become more than a little obsessed with Amelia Earhart. The man's even started wearing an aviator helmet and goggles. [music] >> AMELIA EARHART NEWSREEL: Only a short time ago, Amelia Earhart checked over every detail of her $80,000 flying... >>COREY: I got to thinking that we always hear about Amelia, but c'mon, there must've been other early women aviators - right? So I searched the Internet and found some stuff - you know, from reputable sites like the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and a women aviators' organization. But Uncle Jimmy and I knew there must be more. Conveniently, I was about to go to Washington, D.C. to see all those monuments and museums everyone talks about and decided a trip to the Library of Congress might help satisfy my curiosity. Fun fact - the Library of Congress is open to anyone 16 years or older to do research. It may be called the Library of Congress, but it's our library too! I looked at the Library of Congress's website to learn the hours and where I should go. They also have this nifty video online that explains a lot of details. I found they had a researcher's page and learned about getting my Reader's ID card as the first step. Ten minutes later I was off to the Main Reading Room in the glorious Jefferson Building. [music] >>COREY: I talked to an incredibly helpful reference librarian who was fascinated by my topic. He explained that the Library has many different kinds of material about women aviators in all kinds of places. We started by searching the online catalog. The librarian showed me how to do a keyword search on Amelia Earhart as a quick way to discover books on other women aviators. Some people may call them women aviators. Others may use the term women fliers or female pilots. Uncle Jimmy even calls them aviatrix! Words like that make him feel hip, but we all know the truth. With just keyword searching, you would need to look under all those terms to find titles that match. The librarian explained that if we look at the record in full view, we can see which subject headings are listed for this book. Subject headings are a way for libraries to organize information. In this case, the Library of Congress decided on using the subject heading: women air pilots and pulled all the material together under that term. Once you've found the correct subject heading, a lot of your work locating the material has been done for you already. From this book about Amelia Earhart, we can click on the link to women air pilots. Women air pilots: biography, gets me plenty of books on my topic and I even found this title: Before Amelia: Women Pilots in the Early Days of Aviation. Sounds like Uncle Jimmy and I just struck gold! And the Library's catalog breaks it down even further so you can find biographies of women air pilots from just the United States, or discover that they're from all over the world. There are even 77 novels about women air pilots! And don't forget to look at the end of a book or article; you'll usually find a bibliography - a list of other sources to find information. The Library has digitized so much material on different topics - mostly historical. You can also find photos, sheet music, manuscripts... almost anything that suits your fancy! But remember, just some of the materials have been digitized - there's so much more when you visit the Library like I did. I also wanted to find some magazine articles, so the librarian suggested I search some online databases. Subject headings work in many databases too. My uncle talks about The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature as the way he found articles, but most people just use the computer now. Lots of databases even give the full text of the articles. It turns out that the Library of Congress has hundreds of subscription databases on nearly every topic imaginable. The info's much more reliable and plentiful than the stuff you would dig up using a search engine. You've gotta be here at the Library of Congress to use these subscription databases, but I learned that lots of colleges and even public libraries subscribe to databases too. Of course, I can always go online to the Library of Congress homepage and look for digitized material. But if I want books or articles, those subject headings I just learned about, work in my local public library too. So I'll search at my home library with what I've learned at the Library of Congress. And if I want to expand beyond my local library, I can use a free online database called WorldCat to find out what is available within my zip code, or even a state or two away. What's cool is that if my library doesn't have a book I'd like, I can talk to my librarian and request it through Interlibrary Loan. And my librarian may be able to help me find other resources too. You can even use the Ask a Librarian feature, where you can submit a question using an online form. A librarian in your subject area will e-mail you an answer within five days. Other libraries usually have this application as well. [music] I found out that this research stuff is fun, and just as fascinating as the librarians think it is. Plus, if you talk to one it'll be a whole lot easier. Needless to say, Uncle Jimmy was grateful for all the great info I brought back. And how did he reward me? I guess my birthday came early this year. [music] This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.