Off The Shelf

Just as the Capella Library’s Reference and Interlibrary Loan Services are going to take a break from December 22 through January 1, Off the Shelf will also be on hiatus during that time.

The librarians won’t be answering phone or email questions, but we will be collecting them.  If you have a question that can wait until the first week of January for an answer, please send it our way. 

There will also be several librarians at the Anaheim Colloquium.  While at the colloquium you can sign up for individual reference appointments or attend a Capella Library session.

For those of you in a first course that is currently under way, or who are diligently researching for your dissertation, you will still be able to access the library’s resources, including our Guides and Tutorials page.

See you in January!

- Erin

We’ve recently made a minor modification to several ProQuest databases (ABI/INFORM, ProQuest Education Journals, ProQuest Medical Library, and Psychology Journals).

In the past when you did a search, these databases limited your keywords to be found in the citation and abstract of the article. Now they will default to search your keywords in the citation and document text. This change means you will get more results when you do a search because it’s bringing back results that include your keywords anywhere in the article.

If you find that most of the first several results are not on your topic, you can change how the results are sorted to sort by relevance. This will bring the more relevant articles to the top of your results list.

You always have the choice to change where your keywords are searched. Just click on the drop down menu to the right of the search boxes to search your keywords in a different field.

-Sommer

“A mother reads a message from her son in Iraq, a student gets a job with Teach for America, a German rock band receives feedback on a new single, and your niece dumps her boyfriend. What do all of these events have in common? They all took place on a social network.”
This article by Karen Post called, “The Social Network Guide for Newbies” is a good place to begin.

How to Get Started:
Step 1 – Finding the online social networks best suited for you.
Step 2 – Registration.
Step 3 – Creating your User Profile.
Step 4 – Start networking.
Step 5 – Enjoy your new connections.

Do you belong to any social networks?

-KateP

Will you be in sunny Anaheim over the Holidays?  Is one of your goals for this Colloquium to get more library “savvy”? Well let me make some suggestions.  

If you are Track 1 Learner and this is your first Colloquium attending the Capella University Library’s session “Finding Scholarly Articles & Books” is a good bet. This session will go over the basics of our online library and techniques will be demonstrated to help you use it effectively and efficiently. If you have a personal laptop bring it and you can follow along. 

If you are a Track 2 or 3 Learner check out “Advanced Searching and Finding Dissertations” . This session provides some great tips for bringing your library skills to the ”next level” and for getting ready for your comprehensive exam and dissertation research.

Do you want to learn about Web 2.0 technologies such as RSS, Social Bookmarking, Blogs and Podcasts? Check out the session “Enhancing Research Skills with New Technologies”.

If you can’t make these sessions (or even if you can)  you can schedule a 20 minute one-on-one appointment with a librarian for a overview of library services, or help with a research question or any other questions you may have about the Library.

Please stop by the Library at the Anaheim Colloquium we look forward to helping you!

Robin

ProQuest®: A twelve (12) hour maintenance window will take place to install new enhancements. It will begin Saturday, December 15, 2007, at 22:00 EDT to Sunday, December 16, 2007 at 10:00 EDT. During this time ProQuest databases will be unavailable.

One interesting thing to note about this enhancement…

“ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Multimedia Support release—ProQuest has seen an increase in dissertations and theses that include supplementary digital materials – audio, video, spreadsheets, etc. To properly support scholarly access to these materials, ProQuest is now making them available online in the Full Text version of the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database.” Go to Databases A-Z to get to the Dissertations and Theses Full Text database.

FYI:
Librarian Reference services (Ask a Librarian) will not be available:

• Saturday, December 15th, 2007
• Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 – Tuesday, January 1st, 2008.

Interlibrary Loan will also be unavailable Sunday, Dec. 22nd through Tuesday, January 1st. Interlibrary Loan requests will be processed but there will be no delivery of materials during this time due to the closing of our vendor MITS.

Librarians will be at the Colloquia in Anaheim (Dec. 27-Dec. 31st). And we will all be back Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008.

-KateP

I heard a new phrase today-Environmental Literacy. I was listening to a story on National Public Radio about the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference that is going on in Bali. I have a friend who gave a presentation there a few days ago so my ears perked up to the story.

I am interested in the concept of 21st century literacy and what we need to know to be successful in the 21st century. How would environmental literacy fine into the list of literacies:

• Information literacy
• Technology literacy
• Visual literacy
• Math/Statistical/Data literacy
• Cultural literacy
• Media literacy, etc.

I also came across a map about Clean Development Mechanism projects all across the globe.

Isn’t it amazing how information displayed visually has such an impact on your understanding (and interest) in it? Using datasets and spatial data is a growing field in librarianship as scholars have the ability to harness vast datasets in their research. One consideration is at the end of a project, where should the data go so that future scholars could replicate the study? To the Library? Should the scholar be responsible for keeping it? It will be some time before we all increase our collective literacies to answer questions like these effectively.

-KateP

Have you used Google Scholar? Google works with publishers, universities, professional societies and digital repositories to gain access to material traditional search engines do not index including books, articles, pre-prints, technical reports and more. It searches a subset of scholarly literature in all fields thus it should be used as a tool to supplement searching in the Library databases.

Strengths:

• May help to find seminal authors as results are ranked by relevance and “cited by”. Be sure to verify the quality of results using your textbooks, the library databases, and other sources.
• Use “Cited by” link to find works that cite that article or book.
• Easy to use

Weaknesses:

• Uneven coverage in social sciences and other disciplines. Better coverage in hard sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) and technology in which their publications are more open.
• Unknown coverage. Google will not tell exactly which sources are covered by Google ScholarTM thus this search does NOT replace searches in Capella Library databases.
• Ranking of results still under development. Outdated results may be at the top.

How can I see the full text available in the Capella Library from Google Scholar?
To make the most of Google Scholar you can set your preferences to recognize when full text is available in the CapellaLibrary.

1.) Go to Google Scholar (www.scholar.google.com)
2.) Click on Scholar Preferences on the right side of the search box
3.) Search for “Capella” in the Library Links search box.
4.) Add a check to the Capella University – Full-Text @ Capella box. Click Save Preferences.
5.) From now on, when you do a search you will see items marked Full Text @ Capella. This means the Capella Library has full text to that journal. Click the link and double

Tip: You can search Journal Locator with the journal title if you do not want to set your preferences to see if full text is available.

Learn more at Google Scholar and the Capella Library

Got Questions? Ask a Librarian.

-KateP

As the medium of blogging matures and proliferates, we see more blogs with scholarly roots which can help keep researchers up to date in their discipline.  Cognitive Daily is one of my favorite sites for daily news about peer reviewed literature in cognitive science and psychology.  They have entertaining Friday surveys and thoughtful opinion pieces, but if you want to sort out the scholarly article alerts, click the Just the Research tab at the top of the page.

Cognitive Daily reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field.

 – Erika