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Database Highlights & Trials

February Research Database Trials (Concluded)

Please note, the February Trials have concluded.

During the month of February, the University of St. Thomas Libraries is trialing five research databases. This is an opportunity for the UST community to use these subscriptions at no cost and help determine whether or not the libraries should invest in these resources in the future. We encourage you to provide any feedback about these resources — positive or negative — to the sponsoring librarian listed with each resource by February 24th.  

ASME Digital Collection

Access the ASME Digital Collection 

The ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Digital Collection provides unparalleled depth, breadth, and quality of peer-reviewed content. The platform is an essential resource for professionals seeking engineering solutions to global challenges. It includes:  

  • ASME’s Journals from 1933-present 
  • ASME’s Conference Proceedings from 2000-present and selected proceedings back to 1955  
  • ASME eBooks from 1993-present with selected titles back to 1944 

Please contact Jim Kelly with any questions or feedback. 

 

Compendex on Engineering Village

Access Compendex on Engineering Village 

Elsevier’s Compendex on the Engineering Village platform comprises journals, conference proceedings, dissertations, standards, books, and, recently, preprints. The content is sourced from thousands of publishers from around the world, including major engineering societies like IEEE, ASME, SAE, ACM, and many others. The amount of engineering-focused scholarly and technical literature in Compendex is vast and global in scope, featuring everything from the latest cutting-edge findings to historical research and innovations. 

Please contact Jim Kelly with any questions or feedback. 

 

Inspec on Engineering Village

Access Inspec on Engineering Village 

Inspec hosted on Elsevier’s Engineering Village platform contains over 22 million records from across global publishers to deliver quality content to a wide range of research communities.  

Inspec uses precise, subject-specific indexing to enhance the discoverability of scientific research across physics, electrical engineering and electronics, computers and control, mechanical and production engineering, information technology, and more. 

Please contact Jim Kelly with any questions or feedback. 

 

ProQuest One Business 

Access ProQuest One Business 

ProQuest One Business is designed to support the unique teaching and learning needs of business faculty and students. Developed in collaboration with faculty, students, and business librarians, ProQuest One Business delivers a mix of practical and theoretical content in an interface that helps students build the research skills they’ll need for success in their courses and careers. A business-focused interface intuitively guides users to content including journal articles, books, and company, industry, and country reports. 

Please contact Andrea Koeppe with any questions or feedback. 

 

Trends & Policy: U.S. Immigration 

Access Trends & Policy: U.S. Immigration (Use the menu in the upper left corner to limit to U.S. Immigration) 

Trends and Policy: U.S. Immigration from ProQuest connects policies implemented by the U.S. government with statistics showing the results of those policies and provides context with analytical reports and news articles.  It is designed to be a tool – all the content in one database.  It gathers U.S. immigration laws and other materials from the legislative branch, reports and statistics from the executive and judicial branches, and contextual newspaper articles. It includes relevant documents from 1790 to today. 

Please contact Andrea Koeppe with any questions or feedback. 

 

Database Highlights & Trials, Libraries, Services

Technical Difficulties (off campus only) – APA PsycNET

 

UPDATE: ALL ACCESS HAS BEEN RESTORED!

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PsycNET and all of it’s associated databases (PsycINFO, PsycBOOKS, PsycTESTS, and PsycARTICLES) changed their interface on Monday, July 17. Since that time, these resources have not been available for access from off campus. This is a problem being widely experienced across universities, and APA is actively working on a solution.

During this time, the resources ARE accessible on campus, but if you need an alternative database to use from home, check out these helpful research guides for undergraduate psychology research or graduate psychology research.

We apologize for the inconvenience!

Faculty News, News & Events

Faculty Feature: Celebrating Faculty Scholarship

faculty_scholarshipAs you may have seen in your email, this fall, the Libraries are collaborating with Faculty Affairs, the Center for Faculty Development and the Grants and Research Office to celebrate UST faculty scholarship.  In preparation for an event on November 20th, the Libraries are putting together a list of faculty publications between July of 2014 and September of 2015. 

We monitor faculty publications throughout the year and already have a good start on this list. In an effort to make the list as comprehensive as possible, we’re making  additional request of you to send us the citations of your publications – including (again, from July 2014 – September 2015):

  • Books
  • Chapters
  • Articles
  • Refereed Conference Presentations

We’ll be creating a physical and virtual display of what we know will be an impressive collection of the scholarly and creative output of our faculty.

We’d hate to miss anything! Please send your citations to Laura Hansen at O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library. Any questions, please call Laura at 962-5011.

Thanks!

Database Highlights & Trials

SCHEDULED SERVICE INTERRUPTION: ProQuest Databases (Including RefWorks) Down for Maintenance Saturday Night

ProQuestLogoOn Saturday, August 8, ProQuest will be upgrading its systems infrastructure to improve performance, security, and overall reliability of its products. The window is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. and will last for eight (8) hours.

During this time access to the ProQuest products listed below will not be available:

Research databases

  • Databases on the ProQuest platform (search.proquest.com)
  • Databases on the ProQuest Congressional platform (congressional.proquest.com)
  • Databases on the Chadwyck-Healey platform
  • ProQuest Digital Microfilm

Reference management

  • RefWorks

Bibliographic and catalog enrichment resources

  • Books in Print®
  • ProQuest Syndetic Solutions™
  • Resources for College Libraries

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause!

Database Highlights & Trials, Libraries, News & Events, Services

Do you Summon?

Hi Students! As your research is gearing up this semester, we have a question for you:

Do you Summon?

Summon is a Google-like search tool here at UST Libraries, and you can use it just like you’d use Google…Go ahead and search our databases, book catalog, video collection, and more – all at once!

We know your professors ask you to find specific types of resources for assignments.  With Summon, you can easily filter for peer-reviewed articles, items published in a particular time range, and more.  Even better, it automatically refers you to a relevant UST librarian if you need more help!

Watch the short video below for more great tips and hints about using Summon, and (as always), Happy Searching!

Archbishop Ireland Library, Circulation

Far from campus?

Outside7CountyMetroSummer is wrapping up.  Did you spend time on-campus working towards a graduate education degree and are lamenting that you’ll be far away from campus and easy access to resources for your studies?

If you’re outside of the seven-county metro area, you’re in luck!  UST Libraries offers distant students the following services:

  • Electronically scanning and delivering book chapters and articles from periodicals.  Make a request through ILLiad.
  • Discussing research topics, little and large, via online chat or over the phone, 651-962-5001.
  • Mailing books from our circulating collections free of charge.  Check out the “Interlibrary Loan for Distance Students and Faculty” section here.
  • Plus mailing books other libraries lend to us for us.  This includes CLIC collections in addition to our local region and beyond!
  • And, of course, accessing our ever growing collection of e-books, full-text articles, and online reference works is as easy as logging into your email through the proxy server.

If you are finished with all of your course work and working on your final project or thesis, be sure you are considered active and “on the books” so your access to these resources isn’t cut off!  Each academic department handles this a little differently, so contact your registrar for details.

Best wishes on teaching this fall and on your own studies!

~ Mason M., fellow graduate student and Ireland Library student staff

Libraries, News & Events

Finding Census Statistics during the Government Shutdown

I blogged last week about government sites that are down because of the partial government shutdown.

If your assignment can’t wait any longer, and you’re scratching your head about where to get government data and stats when so many websites are shut down, we do have some ideas for you!  (We’ll keep this list updated as we hear more, too – so check back!)

  • The Wayback Machine (waybackmachine.org) has done a great job archiving in-depth versions of government sites –  as opposed to just screenshots of homepages – so a lot of data can still be found via their site.  It will not be the most up-to-date, nor will it be complete, but it is better than nothing!

These and some other great hints are published by the Pew Research Center – and more are continually being added by researchers across the country.

As always, if you have specific research questions, please don’t hesitate to ask an UST librarian – we are happy to help out!

Libraries, News & Events, Services

Federal Government Shutdown affects Research

It’s happened: the Federal government has shut down.

For those of you doing research today, you may start to encounter a screen that looks a lot like this one:

census.gov

Because of the shutdown, many websites funded by the federal government are currently also down, including statistical organization websites, public sites, blogs, online surveys, and more. Many of them are used by UST researchers on a regular basis.

Below is a list of websites linked to on our subject guides that we currently know of that have been affected; we will try to keep it up-to-date with anything new we discover. 

If you would like assistance finding alternative resources for your research, please feel free to contact any UST Librarian.

Resource Status
American Community Survey Shutdown
American Factfinder Shutdown
Bureau of Labor Statistics (including Consumer Expenditure Survey) Up, but not being updated
Census Bureau Shutdown
Department of Energy Up, but not being updated
Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Website is down, but content is still available via the ERIC database (EBSCO-owned). No new data is being uploaded to EBSCO.
Fedstats Shutdown
Library of Congress Shutdown – Interlibrary Loan will also NOT be available from any federal library, which could potentially cause delays
National Center for Education Statistics Shutdown
PubMed Up, but not being updated
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Shutdown
United States Geological Survey (USGS) Main site shutdown; some critical subsites still live

Archived versions of these websites can all be viewed on the WayBack Machine (waybackmachine.org).  Other options for alternative sources of information can be seen on this list compiled by the Pew Research Center.

More information about the shutdown and available government services can be found at USA.gov.