St. Thomas Libraries Blog

The events of the past few months in northern Africa have been remarkable, world-changing, revolutionary.  A lot of the news outlets try to give background info on events and circumstances that have led to the great upheavals, but if you prefer a more systematic approach to the how we got here, here are a few library resources that can help.

New Encyclopedia of Africa – if you need to understand modern Africa, this is going to give you long articles on Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan.

Europa World – lengthy country background info,  plus a bit of a timeline of what’s going on in the region.  Sadly, the calendar of political events in the Middle East and North Africa ends in September 2010.  Wow – how much has changed in these past few months!

Columbia Gazetteer of the World – chooses Egypt as its Place in the News and features a concise article.

My old standby the Encyclopedia Britannica has an up-to-date article on Hosni Mubarak.  In fact, they’ve got it updated through what he’s doing today.

Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict – hats off to the demonstrators in Egypt that have kept this a mostly non-violent protest.

Routledge handbook of religion and politics – includes an article on Islamism in contemporary Egypt.

What’s great about a number of these resources is that they keep linking to more and related info.

The last big change in the libraries over J-term was the way we deliver databases to you.  We have always had an alphabetical list of resources and a subject list, in addition to having databases on all of the Research Guides.  But we’ve redesigned and improved the alpha and subject pages with plenty of student input.

The new alpha page offers not only the alphabet in big purple tabs across the top, but it also now features a way to look up a database if you know the name.

Obviously, the subject page has databases arranged by subject.  If you’re doing work for, say, biology, just click the biology link and get recommended resources and really clear instructions on what to use when.

For every subject we give you a list of databases that give background information (think Wikipedia-type of info but from library databases, not from the free web).  Of those, we pick one that is especially good for that topic and it’s featured on the left.  Same goes for finding articles.  We give you a list and recommend the best place to find articles on that topic (featured in the left column).  For every page there is a way to contact the librarian who is a specialist in that particular field and links to his/her Research Guides.   And as an added bonus, there is usually section of specialized resources in that given field.  For example, on the English page we have a special section on criticism and where to find it.  You get the idea.

Another way to discover which databases we have is through Summon.  I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Summon in this blog, but it recently added a new feature where you can type in the name of the database and it’ll recommend it to you (i.e. PsycINFO).  If you don’t know the name but know you want a database in biology, just type biology and it’ll recommend databases:

Finally, you can search any database name in the library search and we’ll whisk you right over to the resource you’re looking for – no choosing, no clicking.  Just type in the title and go. The library search is on the very bottom of the library homepage.

Even with all these avenues to find stuff, always remember if you get stuck don’t hesitate to ask us.  We’re here for you.  We buy this stuff for you.  We ask you the best ways to present it.  And we’re thrilled to be able to help you with your research.

Well, technically PsycINFO itself is not new but the look of it is.  Over J-Term we changed PsycINFO platforms from this

to this

You’ll find the new version of PsycINFO includes all the same content, it’s just got a different look.  So if you’re looking up articles on any topic in psychology [like phobias, specifically  the fear of clowns or the fear of mimes (technically not found in PsycINFO – hey, there’s an original dissertation topic for those of you who are still looking)] and you’ve used PsycINFO before, you’ll note the changes.   If you have any questions or comments on the new interface, send ’em to Merrie Davidson.  She’ll help you out.