Author Archives: Fred Rowland

Trial Databases Page

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In order to encourage input from students, faculty, and staff, the library has just opened up a Trials page. This page will provide links and instructions for accessing databases that librarians are evaluating for possible purchase. Feedback from the Temple community is strongly encouraged. There is such a proliferation of databases and other electronic resources these days that it is important for us to get as many views and opinions as possible when considering purchases. The link to the Database Trials page can be found on the top of any of the database lists.

Trials Link

Once on the Database Trials page, make sure to check whether a special user name and passord is necessary, which you’ll find right under the link to the trial.

Trials Page.jpg

So go to the Database Trials page and take a look at the new electronic resources we’re considering. If you have strong feelings about any of these resources, click on the feedback link at the top of the page and tell us what you think.

–Fred Rowland

Citation Searching Article

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An interesting article in the online D-Lib Magazine (11.9 (2005)), “An Examination of Citation Counts in a New Scholarly Communication Environment” by Kathleen Bauer and Nisa Bakkalbasi of Yale, this preliminary study examines citation searching in Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. I quote from their conclusion:

Based on our preliminary examination and discovery of higher citation counts, we recommend that researchers should consult Google Scholar in addition to Web of Science or Scopus, especially for a relatively recent article, author or subject area. A search of Google Scholar will likely reveal both traditional journal articles, some of which will also be covered in Web of Science and Scopus, and additional unique material, but the scholarly value of some of the unique material remains an open question. Consulting Google Scholar may prove most useful for disciplines such as physics, where nontraditional forms of publishing are widely accepted. However, it is important for all researchers to note that until Google Scholar gives a full account of what material it is indexing and how often that index is updated, it cannot be considered a true scholarly resource in the sense that Web of Science and Scopus are. An understanding of the material being covered is central to the validity of any search of scholarly material.

In light of the frequent requests for citation counts on publications (particularly on faculty’s own publications), it may behoove one to search Google Scholar as a supplement to Web of Science. -Derik A Badman

Digital Dissertations is back!

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Writing a dissertation or a thesis? Need to find out who has published what in your area of interest? Got a brilliant idea and wondering whether someone has already stolen your thunder? Want to know a faculty member’s history as a dissertation advisor? You need Digital Dissertations! The Temple University Libraries has switched from Dissertation Abstracts to Digital Dissertations, a change in databases that will make your searching of the dissertation literature much faster and more efficient. Most importantly, in Digital Dissertations Temple dissertations from 1997 to present are available in full-text!! Here are some other important features:

  • 24-page previews of thousands of recent non-Temple dissertations
  • indexing back to 1861
  • you can search for the faculty advisor to each dissertation
  • lengthy, detailed abstracts that are searchable
  • Temple full-text dissertations are a great source for current bibliographies.

Check it out. You might be one step closer to that vaunted PhD. Digital Dissertations is accessible from any of the database lists on the library homepage. By the way, you can borrow non-Temple dissertations using the Thesis Request Form. Also be aware that Digital Dissertations is soon changing its name to Digital Dissertations and Theses. –Fred Rowland

Five Updated Subject Guides

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I’ve just updated five of my subject guides, which provide a quick overview of available resources in the disciplines I’m responsible for. Take a look. Classics: The Basics Islamic Studies: The Basics Jewish Studies: The Basics Philosophy: The Basics Religion: The Basics. Here is the complete list of our subject guides. I added information on how to use WorldCat for interlibrary loans, both regular books as well as theses and dissertations. I also added the online encyclopedias we recently purchased (see Exciting New Online Encyclopedias!). –Fred Rowland

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