This week I spoke to Kate Burke, a reference and student experience librarian at the St Paul campus.   You’ll see her in a wide variety of classes as well as heading up many of the fun activities that happen around the libraries.  Here is what she had to say:

1. What departments are you a liaison for?
   I am responsible for Art History, Philosophy, Air Force ROTC, Mathematics, Physics, Geography, and Geographic Information Systems and Computer and Information Sciences.
2. What resource – in your topic area – do you think is the coolest?
   I love ARTstor
3. What’s one cool thing that resource can do?
   ARTstor can be used by all students to help them create awesome presentation using fabulous artwork

Getting to know Kate…

• What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
  Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Chocolate Chip.
• Who is your favorite author?
  I love Jane Austen and Sue Grafton.
• Do you prefer the Minnesota Twins or the St Paul Saints?
  As a native St. Paulite, I am going with the Saints.
• Is there something random about you that you’d like us to know?
  I make a wicked Angel Food cake.  There is no box involved.  It is completely homemade.  All my children ask me to make it for their birthdays.

Kate may be contacted by email, or by phone at (651) 962-5027.  See more information about her on the library website.

1. What departments are you a liaison for? Political science and General
2. What resource – in your topic area – do you think is the coolest?
   OK!  I love The New York Times Historical.
3. What’s one cool thing that resource can do?
   I don’t know that it’s the best resource for my students who work in the area – but I do know that it is so cool to have current events and see when the first time certain terms were used – like suicide bomber.  I love the fact that you can look at how the country was looking at events contemporaneously – like the Civil War.  For my political science research, I also really like the papers in CQ Researcher.

Getting to know Linda: 

• What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
  Anything with chocolate, fudge, and caramel
• Who is your favorite author?
  I have to many: William Styron for Sophie’s Choice; Graham Greene for Quiet American; Maeve Binchy for wonderful warm fiction; Elizabeth George – Lynley mysteries;  Rushdie – Enchantress of Florence.
• Do you prefer the Minnesota Twins or the St Paul Saints?
  Neither. Baseball, meh – now let’s talk about the Packers!
• Is there something random about you that you’d like us to know?
  I have a one year old grandson, and one on the way – so fun!

Linda can be contacted for research assistance or classroom sessions by email, or by phone at (651) 962-5016.  See more information about her on the library website.

We figured it would be fun for everyone to know who we are and, along the way, learn a bit about what we love about the place we work.  First up is Marianne Hageman, a business librarian who works mainly on the St Paul campus.

Here are some answers she gave in a recent interview:

1. What departments are you a liaison for?
   I’m a liaison librarian for business, specializing in (but not limited to) marketing resources. I’m also liaison for the advertising and PR side of COJO.
2. What resource – in your topic area – do you think is the coolest?
   That’s hard, since we have so many cool resources. But I’ll give a huzzah to MRI+ Mediamark Reporter, the demographics database.
3. What’s one cool thing that resource can do?
   MRI+ can give you information on who buys what, and then ties that to different characteristics, including what magazines people read and the kinds of television programs they watch. There’s a separate section for teen data, and it’s pretty cool (or creepy, depending on how you look at it) to see what teens like to eat for breakfast.
4. Who is your favorite author?
   I can’t limit it to just one! A favorite author from childhood is Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the “Anne of Green Gables” books and so much more. She’s a great comfort read. A favorite British author, recently deceased, is Diana Wynne Jones, who wrote “Howl’s Moving Castle” (made into a film by Hayao Miyazaki (it’s a great film, but the book is better.) A favorite Minnesota author is Lois McMaster Bujold; I’m working on reading all of her books this year. If you ask me tomorrow, I might have a different list.

Marianne can be contacted for research assistance or classroom sessions by email, or by phone at (651) 962-5404.  See more information about her, and schedule a research consultation, on the library website.

I chose Picasso cuz he’s one of my favorites.  Once you get the results, click MORE under CONTENT TYPE to limit to images.

Depending on the artist, you’ll have a lot of image  types to choose from.  Click as many as you like.

You might have to play with your pop-ups. If asked, permanently allow pop-ups from this provider.

You can even search by the title of a painting or photograph (or any type of work of art) if you’d like to get more specific.  These images are coming mostly from ArtSTOR, which you can search separately. If you search ArtSTOR directly you can create albums (after you sign in) and save images to albums.  You can also take ArtSTOR on the road with its mobile app.  You have to first create an account in ArtSTOR in order to use the mobile app.

We have a lot of really cool art resources.  For your one-stop shop on background information, you cannot go wrong with Oxford Art.  It’s very thorough and includes the once-famous Grove Dictionary of Art & Artists.  But Oxford Art is bigger than even Grove.  If it’s articles you have a hankerin’ for, a quick search in Art Full Text will get you what you need. I already told you about ArtSTOR.

If you’re not keen on using multiple tools, just stay in Summon for all of your information needs.  For example, if you want background info on an artist, choose REFERENCE as a content type. Reference is the same as dictionaries and encyclopedias.  In the case of art, you’ll find articles from Oxford Art by searching Summon and limiting CONTENT TYPE to REFERENCE. If it’s articles, stay in Summon and limit to SCHOLARLY JOURNALS INCLUDING PEER REVIEWED. And if you want images, well… I already covered that.

This all actually came about because a student was recently looking for works by Pieter Claesz.  There were 31 found in Summon.  All paintings.  Here’s one of  ‘em.  When I limited to REFERENCE information, I found him mentioned in the “Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience” in an article called “Symbols of Death and Memento Mori.”

Research and analyze companies and industries around the world. Features company fundamentals, SWOT analysis, company financials, company histories, plus industry rankings, profiles, market share data, and more. Formerly Business and Company Resource Center.

Now looks like this:

Kinda fun that it got all spruced up. If, however, you don’t find what you were looking for in Business Insights: Essentials, please have a look at the guide created specifically for ETLS 505 or any of our many, many other company, financials, or industry resources.

Monday, April 29th UPDATE:  Sigh.  Not working again.  Really?  REALLY?

Wednesday, April 24 UPDATE: It appears that all is working in Statesman’s Yearbook. If you experience otherwise, please contact Carolyn DeLuca (2-5012) as soon as you spot the problem.  Thanks for your patience.

Tuesday, April 23 UPDATE: Still not working. Still working with tech support, who have asked me the same questions over and over with the same result – no access. This is getting tedious. Yikes!  This is a terrible update.  I wish I had better news.

It appears we’ve been having technical difficulties all weekend with access to the Statesman’s Yearbook, which is a bummer cuz I know there’s at least one person out there who is really itching to use it.  I’ve been working with Palgrave (Statesman’s Yearbook parent company) all day to figure out the problem and they seem to be stymied.  Rest assured, they are still working on the problem and I’m still troubleshooting with them.  However, in the meantime where does that leave you SY fans?  Thankfully, not totally out there in the cold (and snow).  You can contact a librarian to get a particular report from the SY if need be (it sometimes works from on campus), or you can try using the following, similar sources:

• Political Handbook of the World Online Edition
  Political science and journalism researchers will find this resource useful for comprehensive country profiles, chronicles of national history, government, and political parties, as well as information on intergovernmental organizations, development banks, and the agencies and specialized bodies of the United Nations.
• World Factbook
  Produced by the CIA, each country’s profile includes such information as demographics, and political, economic, and geographic data.
• Political Risk Yearbook
  Provides 45-65 page overviews of the history, economy, politics, and risk forecasts for 100 countries. It provides 10 years of economic data, with description and analysis of the political players and situation written by experts.

To use this work, hit the link and use the table of contents on the left-hand side of the page to drill into the various sections to browse the available data tables.  The tables display in-page as PDFs, and can be downloaded in PDF or Excel workbook format. It’s organized in three regional groupings: Africa, Asia, Oceania; the Americas; Europe.  Within each region, it breaks into chapters on population & vital statistics, labour force, agriculture, industry, external trade, transport & communications, finance, prices, education, and national accounts.

This online version covers from 1750-2010 (five more years than the last print version).  It appears that this source will not be updated, so you’ll need to consider this truly a historical resource.  As with all statistical sources, the frequency and completeness of the data will vary by country and source.

The trial is available through May 16; please send any comments you have to John Heintz, jpheintz@stthomas.edu.

Indeed my little kittens, the bonus is always Chuck Norris.  But if a bonus can have a bonus, in this month’s questions Credo also mocked Williamsburg hipsters. Credo just earned my forever love.

Dilbi Hussein will speak on “NO-SSRIs: Nitric Oxide Chimera Drugs Incorporating A Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor,” and Nicholas Moryn will speak on “Nature’s Chemistry: Designing Artificial Enzyme Systems Using Si/Au Nanoparticles” at this week’s Chemistry seminar. The Seminar begins at 12:15 p.m. Friday, April 5, in Room 251, Owens Science Hall. Everyone is invited to attend.

I would like to point out our fantastic chemistry resources.

• Lange’s Handbook of Chemistry
  Lange’s Handbook of Chemistry includes data for each compound including name, structural formula, formula weight, density, refractive index, melting point, boiling point, flash point, dielectric constant, dipole moment, solubility in water and relevant organic solvents, thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity. And much, much more.
• CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics Contains the most frequently used data in science, including the periodic table of the elements, basic constants and units, thermodynamic and spectroscopic data; electric, magnetic, thermal and structural properties of solids, key data from nuclear science, astronomy and geophysics; and up-to-date health and safety information. Limited to 10 simultaneous users.
• American Chemical Society Web Editions  
  ACS Publications provides full-text access to over 30 journals and other information published by the American Chemical Society.
• Royal Society of Chemistry  
  Current full-text coverage for five RSC journals: Chemical Communications, Chemical Society Review, Dalton Transactions, Organ Biomolecular Chemistry and Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. Also includes selected full-text articles from another small group of RSC publications.

You can use them before the seminar so you sound like a smarty-pants when you ask a question, or you can follow up the seminar by browsing through these resources over the weekend.  You can also use the last 2 from your phone.  Pretty fancy.  Go ahead and pick a few to look at. Your choice.  No pressure.

Our trial subscription will last until April 15th.  It currently includes over 2,700 UST-owned titles. They are browsable by general subject area. Favorite journals can be saved to your own personal bookshelf to be read just like any other e-journal.  Individual articles can be saved, shared, imported into other apps as PDFs, and more.  

BrowZine is growing fast and will continue to expand, adding new titles and features as time goes on. Work is progressing to include RefWorks integration, as well as content from publishers such as Highwire, Cambridge, APA, and many more.  If a favorite title isn’t available now, it is very possible it might become available in the near future!

To get started:

• From your iPad, click here to download BrowZine from the App Store and install it.

• When opening BrowZine for the first time, a list of libraries will appear.  Select “University of St Thomas,” then enter your UST username and password for access to our content.

• Select the subject areas you are interested in and start browsing!

Want to know more? Watch this two-minute introductory video for more details about BrowZine’s features.

Again, this trial will only last until April 15th.  Please check it out now, and send any comments or questions to laura.hansen@stthomas.edu while we consider subscribing to this service.  Thank you!