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Libraries, New Materials, News & Events

Research Guides Re-imagined

Not sure how you can find those “peer-reviewed” articles your prof wants you to use in that research paper?  Don’t know where to find the definition of “heteroscedasticity” for that econometrics assignment? Trying to trace the first usage of ‘Google’ as a verb? Wondering how the heck you’re supposed to find books on ‘Cosmopolitanism and the geopolitics of feminist rhetoric’?

Try the Libraries’ Research Guides!!

The Research Guides, accessible from the library home page or via this direct link are authored by our liaison librarians and will give you specific suggestions of appropriate sources (e.g. scholarly library subscription databases, book catalogs, vetted free web sites, etc.) by format, subtopic, etc. This summer, we completely rebuilt this portion of our website, using a new software product called Libguides.  The new system offers a number of advantages over the old web pages, including:

  • Tabbed layout for understandable organization and easy navigation (see screen shot below)
  • More engaging visual layout, easier integration of images, audio and video content
  • More dynamic content with automatically updated lists of new books, feeds of relevant news and article content, etc.
  • Easy access to your librarian’s contact info for follow-up, plus integrated chat reference service
  • Ability for users to comment on and rate the resources
  • Ability to be notified if changes are made to a guide

libguides_screenshot

 

Note to faculty members:

Many professors have linked to our old web pages on their Blackboard or other course web sites: if you have done so, please update them by finding the appropriate links from the subject listings.  You may also want to review our web page that demonstrates how to link a Research Guide to a Blackboard course.

Instructors wishing to have a new guide created to address research assignments in their specific courses, or who would like resources added to an existing guide should contact their Liaison Librarian for assistance.

Database Highlights & Trials

Summon

Just in time for the fall, a whole new approach to doing library research.  UST Libraries is now offering Summon – a new discovery tool that allows you to search many (but not all) library resources the same way you search the free web. Think of it as a Google-like approach to the libraries’ resources.

Summon is a rich, bibliographic searching tool that retrieves content from most, but not all, of the library resources.  Your results will return such varied media as:

audiovideobookscore

journaldissertationconfebook

If the item isn’t available in full-text in Summon, it links you to the full-text (or tells you where the paper copy is on the shelves) through the Get it button.

It works by indexing content from thousands of publishers.  Then it retrieves results from publishers with whom we have agreements.  Summon doesn’t index content from all publishers, nor do we have agreements with all publishers.  So in many cases you’ll still want to use subject-specific databases to find more info.  But when you don’t know where to start, Summon is a good place.

Here’s an example of beginning my research on water as a human right.

summonscreenshot1

Your results are retrieved in ranked order.  If your keyword shows up in the title of the article, it ranks highest.  The ranking  order continues with  abstract, metadata, and finally full-text.  The full-text is available by clicking on the title and you can save records to export to email or Refworks.  Like Google, you’ll get many, many results because Summon indexes articles, books, and book chapters, as well as library catalog records.  However, don’t get overwhelmed, there are several excellent limiting options.

summonscreenshot2

Give it a try – go on, you know you want to.  I’m curious to know what you think about Summon so please feel free to comment.

Business & Economics, Uncategorized

New database of full text Decision Science journals

Published by the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science, Informs PubsOnline is a database of 12 full text management journals that contains articles which focus on decision sciences, information systems, and supply chain management. It may be smaller than other business article databases, but this specialized collection of operations research journals contains articles that can complement articles found in more general management databases. Users can conduct author or keyword searches and can choose to search in multiple or single selected journals. The full text extends back to 2001 and the articles include all table and graphs and references with some links to other full text articles.