Category Archives: Library News

Grokker Brings Information Visualization to the Masses

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Information visualization is an effective means of communicating information on large quantities of data. It allows the user to quickly identify patterns and relationships that might otherwise remain buried in long stretches of sequential alphanumeric data. The financial services industry uses this method to make sense of reams of data on companies and markets. Information scientists also use this method to make sense of citation patterns among scholars. Take a look atthis document posted on Drexel University’s web site. It shows multiple visuals of “co-citation networks”.

Now a company named Groxis has brought its information visualization software,Grokker, to the free web through an agreement reached with Yahoo. There’s also a more advanced version for a fee. Grokker provides “A New Way to Look at Search”. The principle behind Grokker is that the sequential lists of web sites that search engines provide are ineffective for complicated, multi-faceted searches because relevant web sites are often buried on the 9th, 23rd, or 64th page of results and few have the time or patience to scroll away the day. Instead, Grokker provides a visual “lay of the land”, an overview in pictures that helps you to understand the different angles of your topic. Once you get an initial results screen, you can drill down on the areas that you’re most interested in. It functions a bit like a table of contents in a book.

So take a look and play around with Grokker. This product will probably be followed by many more like it because information visualization has the potential for making web searching more intelligible and efficient.

Exciting New Online Encyclopedias!

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Temple has just purchased electronic access to seven excellent encyclopedias, mainly on religious topics, through The Gale Virtual Reference Library, which is accessible from TUL homepage on the A-Z database list, the eBooks list, and in the Library Catalog. These specialized encyclopedias are great places to start research on unfamiliar topics, providing nice overviews, bibliographies, and linked cross-references. In addition to the great content, The Gale Virtual Reference Library interface is much more user-friendly than those of other e-book vendors, and each encyclopedia can be searched or browsed. Check out the links below! 1) Contemporary American Religion 2 volumes, 1999

2) Encyclopedia of Buddhism 2 volumes, 2004

3) Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World 2 volumes, 2004

4) Encyclopedia of Religion 2nd ed., 15 VOLUMES, 2005

5) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion 2 volumes, 2003

6) New Catholic Encyclopedia 2nd ed., 15 VOLUMES, 2003

7) New Dictionary of the History of Ideas 6 volumes, 2005

New NIH Database Stirs Controversy

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The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) plays an important role in fostering biomedical research and providing publicly accessible databases like PubMed, PubMed Central, and the genetic resources of NCBI. It funds research in-house as well as in the academic and private sectors. All in all, it plays a vital role in encouraging basic biomedical research. Recently, NIH has come into conflict with The American Chemical Society (ACS), the largest professional chemical society in the US and a vendor of important subscription-based information products, over a new NIH database called PubChem. In 2002 NIH created a framework known as the NIH Roadmap in order to optimize biomedical research. PubChem is the chemical informatics component, containing information on small molecules that may be used in areas such as drug discovery and the study of gene function. ACS is concerned that PubMed replicates and therefore unfairly competes with its own CAS Registry, a database that provides curated substance identification of small molecules. They have asked the NIH to avoid any significant duplication of the CAS Registry. ACS has also asked Congressional supporters to put pressure on the NIH, but the House Appropriations Committee has approved NIH’s annual budget and asked both parties to work together to settle the dispute. For more information, see The American Chemical Society and NIH’s PubChem from the University of California, Office of Scholarly Communication. –Kathy Szigeti

Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology

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Temple now has online access to the Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, available from the e-books page. The 5 volume print version is available in the Paley Reference Stacks. Here’s what the publisher says about this reference work: “The Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology is the first work to map this ever-changing field. It is the most comprehensive, research-based encyclopedia consisting of contributions from over 900 noted researchers in over 50 countries. This five-volume encyclopedia includes more than 550 articles highlighting current concepts, issues and emerging technologies. These articles are enhanced by special attention that is paid to over 5,000 technical and managerial terms. These terms will each have a 5-50 word description that allow the users of this extensive research source to learn the language and terminology of the field. In addition, these volumes offer a thorough reference section with over 11,500 sources of information that can be accessed by scholars, students, and researchers in the field of information science and technology.” –Fred Rowland

Foreign News Sources

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The Temple University Libraries provide online access to many different foreign news sources, both English and non-English publications. These sources are important because they offer news, events, and opinions that might otherwise be ignored or filtered by the US press.

First, take a look at the Non-English Language News available in Lexis/Nexis. You can search for articles in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. (Click on images below to see the enlarged images.)

Lexis Nexis screenshot

Second, if you don’t read any of the above languages, you can also read English language news from around the world in Lexis/Nexis. Many different countries publish newspapers in the world’s lingua franca, English.

Lexis Nexis Screenshot 2

Third, try World News Connection for foreign news in English translation. The translations comes from the US Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).

World News Connection screenshot

One thing to keep in mind with both Lexis/Nexis and World News Connection is that you cannot browse through the electronic editions of these newspapers. Instead, you have to search for articles. To search a specific newspaper in Lexis/Nexis, you can click “Sources” in the upper right corner and select your newspaper (“Sources” not shown in the Lexis/Nexis images above). In World News Connection I had no luck searching specific publications, though this search option is supposed to work (appears to be a glitch that needs to be fixed).

Lexis/Nexis and World News Connection are restricted to Temple students, faculty, and staff. Of course, the Internet offers a lot of free public content as well. Here’s a list of newspapers by geographic region from the Internet Public Library. The difference is that in Lexis/Nexis and World News Connection you can search across many publications for articles, thus saving a lot of time. For any one newspaper, you’re also likely to find more content in these two databases than in the free content on the newspaper’s site.

One final note: if you are trying to learn another language, be sure to take advantage of the many news sites that offer audio and video clips in addition to print news. Often governments sponsor the best news sites for language learning. Sometimes you can even hit the motherlode of language learning, audio and video clips along with a transcript, so that you can read and listen at the same time. Take a look at the following sites for audio and video clips:

Deutsche Welle, news in over thirty languages
Radio Netherlands, news in six languages
Voice of America, news in dozens of languages
Vatican Radio, news in dozens of languages, along with a whole lot more of religious programming.

–Fred Rowland

[Addendum: David Murray adds: Great article, Fred. A brand new database for obtaining foreign news articles is “Access World News”. It can be accessed from the A-Z list of databases under “NewsBank”. Access World News offers “full-text content of [700] local and regional papers” outside the United States. There’s a nice browse function that allows easy limiting to a specific publication and/or date. The content I found was all in English. Paid advertising is excluded.]

Twentieth Century North American Drama expands coverage

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The Twentieth Century North American Drama database from Alexander Street Press has just announced that it is expanding its full-text coverage from 1500 to 2000 plays. This new content will be released in September 2005. The increase comes from 250 plays by new playwrights like Adam Rapp, David Lindsay Abaire, Naomi Wallace, Paul Rudnick, and Mac Wellman, all of whom are contemporary rising stars. These plays are unpublished and under copyright so you’re unlikely to find them elsewhere. Another 250 plays come from the early works of major playwrights, including some plays that were written in the late nineteenth century. These additional works come from Eugene O’Neill, David Belasco, Langdon Mitchell, Clyde Fitch, William Gillette, Augustus Thomas, William Vaughn Moody, William Dean Howells, and a few others. As you peruse this electronic collection of plays, make sure to look at the Multi-field Search because it provides fantastic fine-grained indexing, allowing the user to search by the age of the author at the time of publication, gender, race, nationality, genre, literary period, settings, performers, and composers, among others. Other Alexander Street full-text databases available at Temple (see All Research Databases) include:

  • The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
  • American Film Strips Online
  • Black Drama 1850 to Present
  • Black Thought and Culture
  • Early Encounters in North America
  • Latino Literature
  • North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories
  • North American Women’s Letters and Diaries
  • Oral History Online

–Fred Rowland

Paley’s Carol Brigham Elected to IUG

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Library automation systems are crucial to the operation of contemporary academic libraries. They provide the searchable online catalogs; the circulation, cataloging, and interlibrary loan systems; and much more. At Temple there are twenty-three university libraries that contain over 2.9 million print volumes that need to be cataloged, shelved, searched, checked out, checked in, placed on reserve, or sent off as interlibrary loans. The explosion of electronic resources in recent years has placed an additional burden on automation systems. Since May 1999, Temple has used automation software from Innovative Interfaces Inc., one of the world’s leading providers with systems installed in diverse libraries in over forty countries.

Librarian Carol Brigham

As with any widely used computer system, Innovative needs to constantly improve, upgrade, and expand its software offerings to libraries. The Innovative Users Group (IUG) was established as an independent entity in 1991 to “serve as a forum to influence the development and improvement of Innovative products for the benefit of IUG members” (quote taken from the IUG web site). Paley Library Access Services librarian Carol Brigham has been involved with IUG since 1988 and was recently elected to a two-year term as an IUG member-at-large, an honor that indicates her high standing within the library community. Previously, Carol served as secretary and member-at-large of the (regional) Middle Atlantic IUG.

As a member-at-large Carol will represent a broad user population from diverse libraries by soliciting, elaborating, organizing, and communicating recommendations for Innovative’s continually evolving automation software, an annual cycle called the “IUG Enhancement Process”. Throughout the year, IUG members make suggestions for enhancements that are then vetted by IUG experts for feasability. The potential enhancements are then sent out to IUG member libraries to vote on. Currently, libraries are casting their ballots for the 2005 enhancements, with a deadline for voting of July 8, 2005. The winning enhancements will then be sent to Innovative for implementation. Facilitating this process takes deep technical knowledge, excellent communicaton skills, an understanding of the working milieus of many different types of libraries, and a whole lot of patience. Carol will do a great job! She will also play a role at IUG conferences and events. At the most recent national IUG meeting in San Francisco, Carol coordinated and was a panelist on two circulation forums.

Carol came to Temple from LaSalle five years ago and has made a big impact on Paley operations where she helps to formulate Access Services policies, works on special projects, and generally aims at improving operational efficiency. If you’ve ever been to the Circulation Desk in Tuttleman you’ve probably seen Carol. Take a look at her picture. She was probably moving very fast with a pen and legal pad in her hand, as she moved between problems, projects, and meetings.

BTW: The department in which Carol works, Access Services, is responsible for the following library functions:

  • Circulation (checking out and returning books);
  • Interlibrary Loan Borrowing and Lending (borrowing and lending books and journal from and to other libraries);
  • Course Reserves (faculty members put books on reserve for classes); and
  • Stacks (shelving and reshelving and shelving and reshelving…).

–Fred Rowland

New Book Emails

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A number of user specific functions are available in our library’s catalog, Diamond. These include seeing your currently checked-out items, renewing books, and, what I will write about today, saved searches. If you are doing ongoing research in an area or just want to stay up on whatever new books come into the library in your field, the saved searches allow you get email notifications every few weeks of new additions to the library that fall in whatever parameters you specify. I’ll run through a brief example (where necessary I use bright green to highlight in the images; images 2-4 are clickable for a larger view):

Diamond screen with highlighted link to My Library Account Go to Diamond and click on the “My Library Account” button. You will need to click through the login screen and then login with your name and ID number.

My Library Account screen This will then take you to your Library Account screen, which includes your name and contact information, the number of books you have out, any holds you might have, as well as links to search the catalog and to see your saved searches.

Search in catalog showing Save this Search button Click on “Search the Catalog”. This will take you to the catalog search screen. Do a search on your topic. In this example I did a keyword search for “film noir” (I want to see any new books or dvds that come in). When you get a result screen there will be a “Save this Search” button underneath the text fields (this button does not appear if you are not logged in when you do a search). Click on this to save your search.

Saved Searches page in My Library Account area of catalog Follow the “Patron Record” button at the top back to the Library Account screen. Now when you click on “Saved Searches” you will see the saved search. Through this screen you can see the search again (link to the right), delete it, or “mark for email”. If you click off “mark for email” and then “update list” you will be set-up for email notifications. Periodically you will be sent an email with any new additions to your saved search(es), including author, title, call number, and subject(s), as well as a link into the library catalog record for the item. If you have any questions or need assistance contact Derik Badman.

–Derik A. Badman

Diamond Search Bookmarklets

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A bookmarklet is similar to any other “Favorite” or a “Bookmark” that you save in your internet browser. Similar, but also different. It is a very small program that takes input from the user and loads up a page based on that input.

Below are two bookmarklets that can search Diamond, our library catalog. Instead of having to navigate into the catalog and click on the search you want to do, the bookmarklet will search the catalog by keyword in one of two ways:

1) Highlight some text on your screen with your cursor. Then click on the bookmarklet. It will search the catalog for the words you highlighted and bring up a page of results.

2) Click on the bookmarklet. A box will pop-up prompting you to enter keywords. Type what you what to search for in the box and hit “OK”. You will then get a page of results in the catalog.

To use the bookmarklet you need to add it to your list of Favorites/Bookmarks. You can drag the link into your browser toolbar or right click and select “Add to Favorites/Bookmark this Link.” It works best if it is the group of bookmarks that appear in your toolbar.

For Internet Explorer Users:

Diamond Keyword Search

For Firefox users:

Diamond Keyword Search

–Derik A. Badman

EndNote and RefWorks: Differences and Similarities

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Recently a number of patrons have asked about the differences and similarities between EndNote and RefWorks, two programs that help writers and researchers organize their references.

Here are some differences between RefWorks and EndNote:

1) RefWorks is free because the university has a site license to the RefWorks web site. You just have to go to RefWorks to create an account. EndNote costs about $100 for students and about $180 for the exact same software at the regular price. But when you leave Temple, Endnote will still be on your computer, while your Refworks account will be inaccessible.

2) RefWorks is web-based so you can access your account from any computer with an Internet connection. If you are on a computer that does not have Internet access, you will not be able to get to RefWorks. EndNote in contrast is loaded onto the hard drive of your computer so it is not accessible from other computers. However, EndNote licenses do allow you to load a copy onto your “work” computer as well as one on your home computer. Check your license for details.

3) EndNote is probably faster because it resides on your computer. RefWorks will be slow if your Internet connection is slow.
Here are some similarities between RefWorks and EndNote:

1) Both EndNote and RefWorks are databases that allow you to organize the references you use for your research. You can enter references manually or download them.

2) For both, there are two ways to download records. You can start from an external library database, save selected records, and import them into EndNote or RefWorks. The second method is to use either EndNote or RefWorks’ native search interface to search external library databases. Downloading of records can be problematic with some library databases, so for questions on specific databases, get in touch with one of the contacts at the end of this entry.

3) You can output your references into the form of a bibliography in many different styles, including APA, MLA, Chicago Style, as well as hundreds more, including many for the sciences. For each program, you can take an output style and customize it for your own purposes, or you can create a new style from scratch.

4) Each program has an MS Word plugin that allows you to insert in-text citations as you write your paper while your bibliography is automatically constructed at the end of the paper. EndNote’s plugin is called Cite-While-You-Write, while RefWorks’ is called Cite-N-Write.

5) You can transfer records between EndNote and RefWorks, so if you start by using one of these programs, you can switch at a later date to the other one.
So, which one to select? One of my colleagues called RefWorks “clunky” compared to EndNote. Another colleague said that she could use RefWorks after 1.5 hours of training and still had trouble with EndNote after 9 hours of training. She says that RefWorks is much more intuitive. I like EndNote but have spent a long time learning it. I’ve also used RefWorks recently and found it very useful.

The only surefire advice is that if you don’t have EndNote already, start with RefWorks and see how you like it. But above all, if you are doing a lot of research writing, try one of these products out because it could save you a whole lot of time.

For more information, email Fred Rowland or George Fowler.

–Fred Rowland