TU Libraries has recently added Literature Criticism Online to its suite of electronic resources!

Literature Criticism Online is an outstanding reference literature database, offering biographical and bibliographical information on over 3,000 20th century and contemporary literary figures (novelists, poets, playwrights, short story writers, and literary theorists), in addition to scholarly and popular commentary from books, journals, magazines, broadsheets, pamphlets, diaries, and newspapers.

This collection contains the scanned pages of every single volume from two of Gale’s popular, print literary series: Contemporary Literary Criticism (245 volumes currently) and Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism (196 volumes currently). Just think how much shelf space that would be! Users can search by known author, text, critic, or source title, as well as by keyword.

Literature Criticism Online is a valuable literary resource and complements well with the Libraries’ subscription to Literature Resource Center which contains select collections of critical material from Gale’s other literary resources: Children’s Literature Review, Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, and Short Story Criticism.

Be sure to check it out!

-Kristina De Voe, English & Communications Librarian

RefWorks, the online citation manager, is a valuable and easy-to-use tool for all kinds of researchers from students to faculty. A brand new feature makes it even more useful.

Every RefWorks user now has 100MB of storage space to attach files to their citations. This means that not only can you store citations but also the full-text of articles, songs, images, or short videos. Files are limited to 5MB each, which should be sufficient for most uses.

With files stored in RefWorks you’ll never misplace that article you need for quoting in a paper or have to deal with a usb drive filled with unorganized files. RefWorks can keep them sorted in folders and searchable.

In case you missed it, we also added the RefShare module to RefWorks over the summer. For more information see this post on our blog. Also: see shared bibliographies from Temple on RefShare.

Questions? Contact Fred Rowland or Derik Badman.

–Derik A Badman

Temple University Libraries is pleased to announce the purchase of Biological Abstracts, a database covering the life sciences including experimental medicine, biotechnology, zoology, and agriculture. Coverage is from 1997 to the present, indexing over 3,700 journals, with updates on a quarterly basis. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Kathy Szigeti Science Librarian 215.204.4725

The Library is pleased to announce the activation of the RefShare module for RefWorks, the online bibliographic manager. While RefWorks allows users to save and organize citations, as well as output bibliographies or formatted papers (in hundreds of citation styles), this has previously been a closed personal system. Sharing your bibliography with students, classmates, or colleagues has required you to export or output your citations in some way. With RefShare it only takes a click or two to make your bibligraphy viewable by anyone. RefShare allows you to make selected parts of your RefWorks library available to others, including:

• a stable URL accessible by anyone even non-Temple or non-Refworks users
• optionally allowing users to export, print, or create bibliographies from your shared citations
• RSS feeds for new citations
• optional commenting on citations
• add your bibliography to the Temple Shared Folder Area for others at Temple to discover
• Statistics on number of views of your shared citations

With this new feature:

• Professors can share reading lists with students
• Faculty and Researchers can share bibliographies with colleagues at Temple or anywhere
• Students can share bibliographies with classmates (i.e. for group/team work)

You can view a web tutorial on using RefShare here. See the Temple Shared Folders Area for some sample shared bibliographies. Feel free to send any comments or questions. —Derik A Badman

The library’s access to Social Work Abstracts has changed over to a new interface through EBSCO. What does this mean for the user?

1) The interface is easier to use and familiar to most users already through Academic Search Premier or the numerous other databases we access through EBSCO.

2) With the EBSCO interface comes links to hundreds of full-text journals directly from citations in the database.

3) Users can set up search alerts for new issues of journals or ongoing searches. This means that you can get automatic announcements (email or rss) when a new issue of a journal is available in the database or when articles are specific topics (or by specific authors) are added to the database. (See EBSCO’s support page on setting up search alerts.)

Questions? Comments? Feel free to contact me.

Derik A Badman

The library now has access to Gale/Peterson’s Test & Education Reference Center. The resource includes information on colleges, universities, graduate and professional programs, distance learning, scholarships, and awards. This is an up-to-date electronic form of the information found in the many popular Peterson’s guides. Also included are test preparation guides and online practice tests for numerous standardized tests: GED; civil service and military entrance exams; licensing tests for law enforcement, real estate, the postal service, and many other fields; plus college and graduate school admissions exams. This includes the GRE, LSAT, MCAT, and PRAXIS exams. The Career Module of the resource center includes tools for help in finding careers, planning career paths, building resumes, and getting jobs. Feel free to send any comments or questions. —Derik A Badman

Temple University Libraries recently began electronic subscriptions to titles from the CQ Press. This gives the Temple community access to substantial resources on American government, politics, history, public policy, and current affairs. One of the sources of particular note is CQ Researcher, a weekly publication that focuses on a balanced presentation of one specific topic per week that follows the format of sections covering: Introduction to the issue, History of the issue, Recent events surrounding the issue, Where the issue is headed, Maps, graphs, tables, charts, Issue time line, Statements from representatives of opposing positions, Works cited, Readings for further research, Organizations concerned, and Notes on sources. It makes for an ideal starting point for forming opinions and beginning research, particularly on controversial issues and public policy. Recent topics have been: Philanthropy in America (12/08/2006)
The New Environmentalism (12/01/2006)
Privacy in Peril (11/17/2006)
Video Games (11/10/2006)
Understanding Islam (11/03/2006)
Middle East Tensions (10/27/2006)
Ecotourism (10/20/2006)
Caring for the Elderly (10/13/2006) In addition to CQ Researcher, Temple is subscribed to the titles that make up the Political Reference Suite through a common interface that is easy to navigate. The site describes these resources at:

“CQ Congress and the Nation is the signature resource for perspective and analysis of the U.S. Congress. It is the authoritative reference on Congressional trends, actions, and controversies.

CQ Historic Documents Series Online Edition collects more than 2,500 primary sources covering current events around the world from 1972 to present and provides a clear, logical organization and tools for exploring these rich resources. Comprehensive country profiles chronicling national history, government, and political parties, as well as profiles on intergovernmental organizations, development banks, and the agencies and specialized bodies of the United Nations. CQ’s Politics in America has been called “the ultimate insider’s guide to politics” and is an essential resource for readers who want authoritative information on the members of Congress. Explore the actions and opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court with clear and in-depth analysis of every decision made by the nation’s highest court since the 1989-1990 term. CQ’s Vital Statistics on American Politics is a powerful tool for researching statistical data on politics on the United States. Washington Information Directory Online Edition is the one resource you can trust to navigate the complicated web of official Washington. It’s your one-stop source for the right information.”

Feel free to contact me for further information about using these resources. –Rick Lezenby
Librarian Subject Specialist for Political Science
rlfile@temple.edu
215-204-4571

The library has just added 48 new titles to our collection of online reference works through Gale Virtual Reference Library. These full-text works are fully searchable and browsable. Each individual work is internally cross-indexed.

The titles cover a wide-range of topics from the arts to history, education, and science, and they are a valuable source for topic overviews and information when starting the research process.

The new titles are:

African American Almanac, 9th ed.
African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience
American History Through Literature 1870-1920
CDs, Super Glue, and Salsa: How Everyday Products Are Made
Dictionary of American History
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed.
Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy
Encyclopedia of American Industries, 4th ed.
Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice
Encyclopedia of Education
Encyclopedia of European Social History
Encyclopedia of India
Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture
Encyclopedia of Modern Asia
Encyclopedia of Population
Encyclopedia of Recreation and Leisure in America
Encyclopedia of Russian History
Encyclopedia of the American Constitution
Encyclopedia of the Great Depression
Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa
Encyclopedia of World Cultures
Encyclopedia of World Cultures Supplement
Europe, 1450 to 1789: An Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
Gale Encyclopedia of Genetic Disorders, 2nd ed.
Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained
Governments of the World: A Global Guide to Citizens’ Rights and Responsibilities
Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia
History of the American Cinema, Volume 1
History of the American Cinema, Volume 2
History of the American Cinema, Volume 3
History of the American Cinema, Volume 4
History of the American Cinema, Volume 5
History of the American Cinema, Volume 6
Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying
Macmillan Encyclopedia of Energy
Major 21st-Century Writers
Major Acts of Congress
Nutrition and Well-Being A to Z
Reference Guide to Short Fiction, 2nd ed.
Reference Guide to World Literature
Science and Its Times
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture
Tobacco in History and Culture: An Encyclopedia
Water: Science and Issues
West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, 2nd ed.
World Education Encyclopedia
World Press Encyclopedia
Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations

—Derik A Badman

TU Libraries is pleased to announce the addition of iPOLL Databank from The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research to its collection of databases.

A fabulous resource for the public opinion/public policy scholar, iPOLL is a dynamic, full-text database of 500,000 questions from national public opinion surveys from as far back as 1935, covering a wide array of social and political topics as well as economic issues, including the environment, presidential elections, Social Security, and immigration.

Survey sources include major U.S. survey research organizations: the Gallup Organization, The Roper Organization, Louis Harris and Associates, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and more.

Keyword, subject, organization, and date indexes are provided, allowing users to sift through questions easily. Each item includes the complete question text and the percentage of the public giving the response, in addition to study level information, such as the name of the organization(s) who conducted the poll, the dates when the poll was conducted, the polling method used, and a description of the polling sample.

Because the database focuses solely on surveys that have U.S. national adult samples – and not state or foreign samples – iPOLL complements well with the Libraries’ subscription to Polling the Nations, an online database of national, international, state, local and special survey information.

Access to iPOLL requires free registration.

Please feel free to contact me for further information about the resource.

–Kristina De Voe