Karen Brunner – St. Thomas Libraries Blog

St. Thomas Libraries Blog

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Karen Brunner

Just for Fun, News & Events

Need a Break? The Libraries Are Here for You!

Between assignments, exams, and everything else on your plate, everyone needs time to decompress. The Libraries aren’t just about academic books and research databases, we also provide access to thousands of movies, music, magazines, and more to help you relax and recharge.

Stream, Read, Listen, Explore

Catch Up on News & Magazines

  • Digital News – Details on accessing digital subscriptions to news sites like The New York Times, WSJ, The Athletic, and more!
  • Flipster – Browse digital versions of popular magazines like People, The New Yorker, and Consumer Reports or download them to Flipster’s free app found on Google Playor the iOS App Store.

Movie Night, Anytime

  • Digital Theatre+ – World-class theater performances from your couch
  • Film Platform – Independent and international cinema, includes many Oscar-nominated films and festival winners.
  • Films on Demand: Feature Films for Education – Hundreds of films and documentaries, including Academy Award winners.
  • Kanopy – Access to more than 10,000 titles in all subject areas
  • Swank – Popular movies for when you just want to watch something fun
  • Hoopla – Stream movies, TV shows, and audiobooks

Your Soundtrack

Get Lost in Discovery

All these resources are available 24/7 through the St. Thomas Libraries with your university login. If you have questions, reach out through our Ask a Librarian service.

Also, don’t forget about your local public library. Your public library card (which you can often receive immediately digitally) may give you access to even more entertainment and information resources in your community. Finally, the eLibrary of Minnesota (ELM) provides Minnesota residents access to many resources, including magazine and newspaper articles, and numerous media, including images, videos, and audio files.

 

February 10, 2026 by
News & Events

Library Workshop: AI-Powered Scholarly Research Using Consensus

On Thursday, November 13th at 12pm, the St. Thomas Libraries will host a one-hour Zoom session (register here) to help attendees learn about an AI-powered research tool called Consensus. The libraries are trialing Consensus for the 2025-26 academic year and want to help interested users learn how it and the class of research tools it represents differ from both traditional library tools and more web-augmented research tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT. Learn how it deploys LLM natural language searching to surface research from a corpus of 200M+ academic papers, and how it can help both students and faculty with quick-and-dirty literature reviews and syntheses of scholarship on a wide variety of topics.

Session led by librarians Scott Kaihoi and Karen Brunner.

Registration available here. 

October 29, 2025 by
Libraries, LibrarySearch

Help Shape the Future of LibrarySearch! (Concluded)

Picture of the LibrarySearch search box

Please take a few minutes to complete our brief user experience survey to share how you currently use LibrarySearch and what improvements would make your research process easier. The St. Thomas Libraries, in collaboration with our consortium MnPALS, is in the process of evaluating LibrarySearch. Sometimes referred to as the “Google search of the library” or the library catalog, LibrarySearch is the online tool used to find everything from scholarly articles to books to digital media. We want this system to work intuitively for YOU, whether you are a professor preparing course materials, a student working on research, or staff supporting university programs.

This is your chance to help design a search experience that makes finding resources easier and more efficient for everyone in our campus community. Don’t miss this opportunity to improve how you discover and access the information you need! If you have any questions, please contact Karen Brunner, Associate Director for Research, Education & Engagement (brun4952@stthomas.edu).

 

September 26, 2025 by
Database Highlights & Trials, News & Events

Generative AI Tools for Research

Generative AI Tools in Library Databases

The St. Thomas Libraries are trialing several databases in February, including two with AI-driven search interfaces: Scopus AI and Web of Science Research Assistant. The Libraries are excited about the potential for these tools to help researchers save time and uncover hard-to-find content. As we look at the broad range of AI-based tools that advertise similar functionality, we are closely evaluating their capabilities and differences.

What makes these library tools different from freely available tools?

The tools the library is trialing combine natural language AI search with high-quality, subscriber-only content. Both Scopus and Web of Science index over 20,000 journals, offering rich metadata that enhances summaries, relevancy rankings, and connections to related research. Additionally, as tools connected to our subscriptions, full-text access is often just a click away.

Free tools generate results based on either general web searches (Perplexity, ChatGPT Web Search, etc.), the Semantic Scholar corpus of academic documents (Semantic Scholar, Elicit, Consensus), or a mix of web content and publisher metadata they maintain themselves (Scite). These tools often do quite well at surfacing and summarizing relevant scholarship, particularly in fields with a lot of open access content, but results can vary widely depending on the specific subfield being researched.  Some disciplines are well-covered and return excellent results, while others have gaps where important publishers or journals are missing.  Free tools may also include predatory journals and student scholarship in the results they return.

So…is the library saying I shouldn’t use the free ones?

Not at all! We’re actively testing them alongside subscription-based tools to understand their strengths and limitations. Right now, it’s a “both/and” situation rather than “either/or”—free tools can help surface insights missed by traditional searches, but the tools we are trialing fill in many gaps left by the free tools, particularly when doing deep, comprehensive research.

We want your feedback!

We would love to hear from anyone who is interested in using AI tools to help them with research and has time to try out either Scopus AI or the Web of Science Research Assistant.  If you have tried them, please take five minutes to fill out our feedback form.  Faculty input is crucial when we evaluate new tools like this.

February 7, 2025 by
Database Highlights & Trials, Libraries

Putting Patients First: Evidence-Based Care Tools

During the month of October, the St. Thomas Libraries will be trialing two evidence-based resources to support health care decision making: UpToDate and Cochrane Library.

UpToDate is a physician-authored point-of-care medical resource. What does that mean in laypersons’ terms? A point-of-care tool aims to provide a clinician with the most recommended course of treatment based on a comprehensive overview of the best available evidence at the point-of-care with a patient.

UpToDate provides over 33,000 graphics, summary and recommendation information for treatment, patient education leaflets, calculators, drug information, and a drug interactions tool.

You can access the Libraries’ trial of UpToDate here.

The Cochrane Library is a powerful database of literature reviews, research protocols, and clinical controlled trials that can be used to inform healthcare decision-making. It consists of six collections:

  • Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
  • Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials
  • Cochrane Methodology Register
  • Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects
  • Health Technology Assessment Database
  • NHS Economic Evaluation Database

Try a basic or advanced search in Cochrane Library using keywords related to your topic.

You can filter your results by date, language, type, and topic on the left side of the search results. Be sure to click the tabs at the top of the search results to find different types of sources, such as Cochrane reviews, protocols, trials, and clinical answers.

You can access the Libraries’ trial of Cochrane Library here.

Please contact Karen Brunner with any questions or feedback you have about these database trials.

 

October 4, 2022 by
Database Highlights & Trials, Libraries

October Trials: Gearing Up for Nursing!

During the month of October, the St. Thomas Libraries will be trialing several resources in preparation for the BSN and MSN programs starting next fall. Please look at these resources and let us know if you would find them useful for your teaching and research.

Nursing & Allied Health Database – designed to support the teaching, learning, and research needs of nursing and allied health students and educators. Includes 360 full-length clinical skills videos.

LWW Nursing and Health Professions Premier Collection –  Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins (a major publisher in health field) offers this collection of over 80 core nursing journals.

Nursing Current Concepts and Practices Video Collection – Titles in this collection feature copyrights only within the past five years and are hosted on the Films on Demand (FOD) platform. Highlights include Caring for the Dying Patient (2020), Cultural Awareness in Healthcare (2020), and Clinical Skills Essentials Collection (2021).

Bates’ Visual Guide to Physical Examination – This resource delivers head-to-toe and systems-based physical examination techniques for the (Advanced) Assessment or Introduction to Clinical Medicine course. The site features more than 8 hours of video content.

Your feedback on these resources is valued. Please direct all comments and questions to Karen Brunner (brun4952@stthomas.edu)

October 7, 2021 by
News & Events, O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library

RefWorks Workshops

Organizing Your Research! Citing Your Sources in Various Styles: APA, AMA, ASA, CAS, MLA, and more!

Learn about RefWorks, the software program that

  • saves you time,
  • lessens frustration, and
  • makes your paper look professional.

You can even insert citations (in-text citations) while you’re writing (really typing) your paper. Then you can push a button and your references list/works cited will print with those articles you’ve already cited!

If you mistakenly use the “wrong” citation style, push a button and change all the citations AND your references to the right one!

Avoid panic. Avoid headaches.

Librarians at the University of Saint Thomas welcome you to a comfortable, hands-on workshop designed to ease your work.

Workshops will be held in-person during Convo hour on:

  • Oct. 7 12-1pm, OSF Library Room 208
  • Oct. 28 6-7 pm, Zoom (link provided after registration)
  • Nov. 11 12-1pm, OSF Library Room 208

If you can’t make these dates, times, or the location, let us know. We’re always up for more.

Please register here.

Any questions can be directed to Karen Brunner (brun4952@stthomas.edu).

September 28, 2021 by
Libraries, News & Events

LibKey Nomad: Get to the Full-Text Faster!

Have you ever found an article citation in Google Scholar or *gasp* Wikipedia, and wondered if the library had full-text access? Or perhaps a publisher has sent you links to some articles hot off the press and you just really wish you didn’t have to search for them via the library site to see if we have access? Great news–the St. Thomas Libraries have begun using a new tool called LibKey Nomad. And now that many of us find ourselves working from home, LibKey Nomad will make connecting to full-text access provided by the Libraries even easier!

LibKey Nomad is a browser add-on for Chrome that facilitates access to articles available from St. Thomas Libraries’ subscriptions without needing to go to the library website.  It’s like a shortcut to our GET IT service. And because it is a browser tool, you will know if an article is available before you have to log in to your University of St. Thomas library account. LibKey Nomad is currently only available for Chrome.

To start using LibKey Nomad, you will need to add the extension from the Chrome Web Store. Detailed instructions about installing LibKey Nomad and using it can be found in our LibKey Nomad library guide.

Questions? Please contact Research & Instruction Librarian, Karen Brunner (brun4952@stthomas.edu).

March 20, 2020 by
Database Highlights & Trials, Libraries, Science

JoVE Offers FREE Access through June 15

In response to the significant impact COVID-19 is having on the educational community, JoVE is providing FREE access to their STEM education video library collection through June 15. While this access does not include all of JoVE’s content, it does include access to the following:

  • JoVE Core – a video textbook that isolates and visually presents core concepts in Biology and Social Psychology to improve learning comprehension.
  • JoVE Science Education – a collection of simple, easy-to-understand video demonstrations in eight STEM fields
  • Lab Manual – comprehensive, curriculum focused videos for introductory biology lab courses

In order to obtain access, you must use your St. Thomas email address to create an individual JoVE account. Go to https://www.jove.com/ and click the “Log In” link at the top of the page and then hit the “Sign Up” button that is provided. From there you can save the login/password info to your browser or simply re-enter when returning to the JoVE site.

This free access is open to all St. Thomas students, faculty, and staff. Please contact Research & Instruction Librarian, Karen Brunner (brun4952@stthomas.edu), with any questions.

March 16, 2020 by
Database Highlights & Trials, Science

A New PubMed is Here!

The new year includes a new PubMed. Don’t worry, it will continue to be the go-to biomedical database with over 30 million citations and growing daily. But gone is the clunky, 1990s-esque database look; in its place the National Library of Medicine promises a modern interface with intuitive search features and responsive design to improve the mobile experience.

Here’s a quick overview of some key features that you rely on for searching, as well as for saving and sharing your results:

  1. The default sort order of results is now Best Match. Best Match uses an algorithm based on several relevance factors. You can choose to toggle results to a Most Recent sort.
  2. Use the Results by Year graph to see trends in literature over time or to refine your search results by publication year.
  3. Use the filters along the left to meet your research needs.
  4. Save your search results to a file, email your results, or send your results to a clipboard. Please note: if you previously had an NCBI account, it will continue to work in the new PubMed (so if you previously saved searches and/or results–they will still be there!).

While Legacy PubMed is still currently available, it will eventually be retired (though no official end date has been announced). The St. Thomas Libraries encourage you to familiarize yourself with the new interface. For the best search experience, please remember to always access PubMed from the St. Thomas Libraries page.

In the meantime, if you have questions or need help with the new PubMed, please contact reference librarian Karen Brunner (brun4952@stthomas.edu).

January 7, 2020 by