Author Archives: Steven Bell

Take the Open Access Quiz for Open Access Week

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Open Access Week is celebrated each year in late October. It is an opportunity to both create more awareness about the importance of creating more open access options in the world of academic and scholarly publishing, as well as celebrating the many accomplishments achieved so far, such as an expanding universe of open access scholarly journals, open access resolutions at a growing number of research universities and even successful efforts to promote open access sharing of federally-funded research. Here is a just-for-fun open access quiz to test your own knowledge of why there is an open access movement in academia. If you would like to learn more about open access, author rights or copyright issues and how individual faculty might make a difference email your librarians.

We’re Back! Thanks for Your Patience and Support

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Whew! After the catastrophic failure of our library web site on Sunday, Sept. 11, we had activated our alternative homepage, a slimmed down menu of all our resources. As we explained on our alternate page, after a scheduled power outage ended Sunday morning, our usual webservers and a key backup failed to reboot. Many members of the library technology staff, working with colleagues from computer services, worked many hours to build several servers from clean installs and then restore the library web site from a new physical location less subject to the periodic power outages which afflict Paley Library . Our goal is to make sure the site runs reliably and consistently so that the resources can be reached anytime, from anywhere, 24/7. Owing to equipment failure that was not possible and so we had to make do with a stripped down alternate page that menued our resources. We greatly appreciate how understanding the Temple Community was during this difficult situation. Thank you for being patient – and putting up with our alternate site – until we restored the regular site. As of Thursday September 22, the website is up and we are actively testing and repairing minor issues. For example the text-only version of the site is not working this morning. We have asked our automatic text rendering service to redirect their scripts to the new IP addess of the website and hope the text only version of the site will be restored on Friday. Thank you! Originally posted 9/21/11 by Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian Augmented 9/22/11 by Jonathan LeBreton, Associate University Librarian.

Welcome Back Temple Students

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The staff of Temple University Libraries are excited about the start of the fall 2011 semester. We want to welcome all of our returning students back to campus, and we welcome all of our new students as well. Temple University Libraries has some new and exciting things in store for the fall campus, plus lots of interesting events for you to attend. Be on the lookout for our “Guide for Library Users” that will appear as an insert in the Temple Student News a few weeks from now. It’s your one-stop guide to everything you need to make great use of the Libraries at Temple. Keep following our library blog throughout the semester. You can also follow us on Twitter at /templelibraries and on Facebook. What’s new? Give our new Summon search a try. It searches the majority of our electronic research systems simultaneously – and fast! Now you can do one search and find the books and articles you need with one system. You’ll find the Summon search box prominently displayed on the Libraries web homepage. It looks like this:

Screen shot of the new Summon search box, (linked to larger version). When you visit Paley Library, take a look at the new flex-study space on the first floor in the computer commons. If you need a spot for your group or team to meet for a project, this is a good place for it. If you haven’t been over to the Science & Engineering Library recently, stop in (2nd Fl. of the Engineering Building). We improved all the furniture over the summer, but the project isn’t finished yet. We’ll be adding more computers during the semester. The staff of the Libraries wishes all our students a successful semester. Don’t forget. We are here to help you succeed. If you need any kind of help with research, finding books or articles, getting data, learning how to become a better researcher – we are the people who can help.

New Flex-Study Space – Use for Group Work on 1st Floor

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One challenge of using the Paley Library is finding a good group study space. There are study rooms on the upper levels and some movie viewing rooms on in the Media Services area, but nothing on the first floor. We have now added the Flex-Study Space, a new area in the Computer Commons on the first floor (west). Located in the corner opposite the News Media Lounge, the Flex-Study Space features folding screens that can be used to quickly create a room for group study. There are folding tables that can be individually or can be joined together into one large table that holds approximately ten people. There is also a computer monitor on the wall into which a student can connect his or her laptop. Please know that this is a study space so we ask that students refrain from using it for social activities such as parties, card games, etc. The Flex-Study space is open to all on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you have questions about the space or need assistance, just stop at the “Ask Here” desk in the Computer Commons. Demi Lune table under a wall mounted flat screen TV.Larger surface area table in study room.

Fair Use – Separating the Myth From the Reality

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In this useful advice column published at Inside Higher Ed, well-known copyright expert Patricia Aufderheide shares her seven Myths About Fair Use. This is helpful to all faculty who use copyrighted materials in their teaching, and have uncertainties about when fair use applies to their incorporation or distribution of copyrighted works. Temple University’s academic librarians can also help when there are questions or concerns about copyright and fair use. We both understand the copyright law, and have mechanisims to help faculty avoid violating copyright. We are here to help, so get it touch with us. Start by contacting your departmental library liaison.

Google Scholar Introduces New Citations Metrics Tool

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Faculty members and researchers are always interested in how many times their articles are cited. Temple University Libraries provides access to the Web of Science, a useful database for obtaining citation counts. Now Google Scholar is offering a service called Google Scholar Citations that will provide scholars with a profile page that monitors their articles’ citation counts. It appears to be based on institutional affiliation, so if a scholar has published at several instituitons it may be necessary to have multiple profiles on the service. Right now the service is available in limited supply. If you are not able to obtain a profile you can sign up to be notified when the service is officially launched for general consumption. But you can take a look at the profiles created by others to get a sense of what it will offer. That’s right. You can make your profile (the list of your articles and their citation counts – along with a few metrics) public – and then share it with your friends. Won’t they be thrilled to see how many citations you’ve amassed.

Celebrate Digital Day At Paley – March 23

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Temple University Libraries will celebrate Digital Day — a celebration of our fantastic e-resources — on Wednesday, March 23, from 11:00am to 2:00pm with an e-resource fair held in Paley Library. Vendors and library staff will be on hand to familiarize you with the wide range of library resources and services available for research. Vendors include:

  • Adam Matthew
  • Alexander Street Press
  • Films Media Group
  • Gale
  • ProQuest
  • Sage
  • SimplyMap
  • Thomson Reuters

There will be food and drink, prizes, and a raffle too! Enter the raffle to win great prizes including: Kindles, a nook, an iPod shuffle, plus gift cards to Amazon, iTunes, and more!

We hope you’ll stop by and enjoy the fair — this is a fabulous way to learn how the library’s e-resources can help you with your research! Please know that owing to the fair you can expect a higher noise level on the first floor of the Paley Library, particularly on the east side of the building (normally a quiet zone). In addition, there will be fewer computers available on the east side of the first floor of Paley Library, but there will still be many computers available in the Library. Hope to see you there!

Take Our Survey

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You may notice something different on our Temple Libraries homepage today. There – in the upper right hand corner of the page. Now you see it. Place your mouse pointer there and you’ll be invited to take our satisfaction survey. We’ll be offering this survey through the end of the semester. It’s a totally opt-in survey. You won’t receive an email asking you to take the survey. If you want to complete the survey – it’s there. There are two versions of the survey: short and long. The short version takes approximately 7 minutes to complete, while the longer version takes about 15 minutes. We hope you will take time -either less or more – to complete the survey. We are always looking for ways to improve Temple University Libraries and the services it offers. Your feedback will help us to do a better job of serving you and the Temple University community. If you have any questions or feedback about the survey, please contact Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian.

Welcome Back Temple Students! ceLIBration Welcomes New Students

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The staff of Temple University Libraries are excited about the start of the fall 2010 semester. We want to welcome all of our returning students back to campus, and we welcome all of our new students as well. Temple University Libraries has some new and exciting things in store for the fall campus, plus lots of interesting events for you to attend. Be on the lookout for our “Guide for Library Users” that will appear as an insert in the Temple Student News, and keep following our library blog throughout the semester.

You can also follow us on Twitter at /templelibraries and on Facebook.

On Friday, August 27 the Temple University Libraries held its fourth annual ceLIBration event in Paley Library as apart of all the Welcome Week festivities. The several hundred students who attended ate over 300 hot dogs, 400 cookies, 500 soft pretzels, 100 Jimmy Johns sandwiches, and more water and soda then we can count. In addition to the music and games, a highlight of ceLIBration was the Great Library Scavenger Hunt. Participants had to complete a series of tasks to find the answers to the questions, and in doing so they traveled to every corner of Paley Library.

The winners of the first hunt were Dion Trinidad (first place – shown below on the left), Dannielle Harrington (second place) and Laura Carione (third place). The winners of the second hunt were Katie Gensemer (first place), Kevin Chaya (second place) and Jennifer Cubbler (third place) – all three shown below on the right.

The Temple University Libraries thanks all the students who came out to ceLIBrate with us, and we look forward to a good fall semester. As always, we are here to help you succeed.

scahunt1.jpg

Survey Will Gather Information About Electronic Resource Use

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In an effort to gather information about the usage of the Temple University Libraries’ electronic resources, an occasional web-based survey will be launched on Tuesday, August 31. The survey form will appear when connecting to any electronic resource. That includes the library catalog, the journal databases, music libraries, electronic books, etc. The online web survey must be completed in order to gain access to the desired electronic resource. This four question survey, while creating a momentary disruption, will only be conducted for two consecutive hours per month through the next academic year. The survey is anonymous and will coincide with short on-site surveys of a similar nature being offered at Paley Library.

The University administration has requested that we conduct this survey in order to gain more information about how the institutional investment in electronic information resources contributes to our scholars’ and researchers’ capacity to perform research that leads to new discoveries. While this survey will create some minimal disruption in the short run, the data gathered will be of great benefit to our instituition in the long run. Therefore we will greatly appreciate your understanding and cooperation if and when you are asked to complete the survey form.

Should you have further questions, an FAQ is appended to the online survey instrument or you can contact the Controller’s Office which is sponsoring the survey.