Featured Database: Gale Virtual Reference Library

Posted on by
Reply

A Temple News reporter recently asked me about underutilized library resources. She wanted to know which resources, if more widely known, would have the greatest positive impact on students’ research. At first I thought about JSTOR,Periodicals Archive Online, and other high-profile journal databases. After some additional thought I began to realize that another category of resources receives far too little attention in today’s research environment. I’m talking about general reference material — scholarly encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, statistical sources, and bibliographies. After all, finding reliable background information — a primary purpose of reference works — is absolutely critical to good research. Temple subscribes to several databases that provide digital versions of traditional encyclopedias and other reference sources. Among these databases are ABC-CLIO eBooks, Cambridge Companions, Credo Reference (formerly xreferplus), Gale Virtual Reference Library, netLibrary Reference Center, Oxford Reference Online, Reference Universe, and Sage eReference.

For history researchers, each of these databases has something to offer. Here I will highlight the Gale Virtual Reference Library, a database that provides full-text access to twenty history reference works, including these four noteworthy titles:

Encyclopaedia Judaica.jpg
Encyclopaedia Judaica: Provides an exhaustive and organized overview of Jewish life and knowledge from the Second Temple period to the contemporary State of Israel, from Rabbinic to modern Yiddish literature, from Kabbalah to Americana and from Zionism to the contribution of Jews to world cultures, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition is important to scholars, general readers and students.
European Social History.jpg
Encyclopedia of European Social History: This six-volume reference includes more than 230 articles, ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 words, on everything from serfdom and the economy, to witchcraft and public health.
Modern Middle East.jpg
Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa: The set covers the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa, with major sections on Colonialism and Imperialism, the World Wars, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the United Nations involvement in the region. Each country in the region is reviewed, detailing its population, economy and government.
History of Ideas.jpg
New Dictionary of the History of Ideas: A six-volume survey of the history of Western thought and culture, presented through 700 alphabetically arranged entries. Each entry explores the origin, cultural interpretations, and historical themes of such subjects as beauty, love, feminism, diversity, and social capital, among many others.

—David C. Murray

New Database Trial – Making of Modern Law: Trials 1600-1926

Posted on by
Reply

This digital collection contains books and pamphlets, official and unofficial trial documents and materials, legal transcripts, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations. The collection covers trials from all countries and languages, although the great majority are English-language and published in the U.S. or Great Britain. Documents are in PDF format and are fully searchable.

This is a trial sponsored by the Law Library. I’d be interested to know if historians and other social scientists find it useful.

—David C. Murray

New: Find Articles by Citation

Posted on by
Reply

We have just added a new service to TUlink. The Find Articles by Citation form allows you to enter an article citation (or part of a citation) and let TUlink find the full-text for you.

tulink-citation.png

As long as you enter at least a Journal Title, ISSN, DOI, or PMID, TUlink will try to get you a link. In many cases you will get a direct link to the full-text labeled “Article”. In some cases, the best TUlink can do is get you a “Journal” link that will take you to our electronic access to the journal where your citation is found. If Temple holds the journal in question in paper, you will get a link, and if TUlink cannot find any results it will direct you to an interlibrary loan form where you can request your article.

(More information on using the TUlink Find Articles by Citation form.)

In conjunction with this new addition we have slightly altered the “Find Articles” section of our library home page. We have added Find Articles “by Citation” to the list. Also, as part of this alteration, the list of “Only Full-Text” databases has been removed. The reasons for this are two fold: a) with the addition of TUlink, even if a database doesn’t have full-text in it, full-text access is a few clicks away through the “Find Full-Text’ icon; b) the full-text database list has gotten so long that it is no longer the small, useful subset of resources it once was.

–Derik A Badman,
Digital Services Librarian

Use Google Scholar to Find Full-Text @ TU

Posted on by
1

Google Scholar has become a useful search tool because it allows you to search across the content of many different databases, including JSTOR, Project MUSE, Blackwell Synergy, Cambridge Journals Online, SpringerLink, HighWire Press, Journals@Ovid Full Text, Sage Journals Online, ScienceDirect, and many more. That is not to say that the entire content of these databases is available through Google Scholar (which has never released a complete list of its sources or the extent of its coverage) but at least some of it is there. Google Scholar also includes books from Google Book Search in its search results.

Up till now, one of the problems with Google Scholar for Temple students, faculty, and staff has been the difficulty in retrieving the full-text of articles. You might find a juicy article in Google Scholar but after clicking on the link get a message that the article is blocked, even for many databases that you know Temple subscribes to. Well, this process has just gotten a whole lot easier.

Scholar.jpg

Now Temple has registered its TUlink service with Google Scholar, which means that you can link directly from Google Scholar into the library’s subscription databases. Look for Find Full-Text @ TU right after the article title and click on it. You will see the TUlink interface pop up with links for full-text if we have it online or in print, or a link to Temple’s Interlibrary Loan Form if we don’t.

From within any of Temple’s campuses, links to Find Full-Text @ TU will appear automatically. From off-campus you need to do one of two things:

    1. Just click HERE and it will automatically set your Google Scholar preferences for Find Full-Text @ TU, or

 

  1. Go into the preferences of Google Scholar and select Temple University fromLIbrary LInks.

You will find that Google Scholar is a nice addition to your research toolkit. Including it when researching a subject often brings some unusual and unexpected results. Set up your Find Full-Text @ TU preference and give it a whirl.

Find Full-Text @ TU will NOT appear for books. For books, click on the link toLibrary Search at the bottom of the citation. This will take you to the record of the book in WorldCat.org, where you can input a local zip code (Temple’s is 19122) to find a local library with the book.

You can set your Google Scholar preferences to use Refworks as your citation manager. In Google Scholar Preferences, just select Refworks as theBibliography Manager.

–Fred Rowland

Creating Research Assignments That “Stick” With Students

Posted on by
Reply

Why would the author of a paper start off by relating a story about a lab exercise involving the autopsy of a pig that she experienced as a college student? While it’s not particularly attractive imagery, it certainly does send a powerful message about the tremendous value that authentic learning has for college students. That new paper from EDUCAUSE is titled “Why Today’s Students Value Authentic Learning”.

The author readily admits that authentic learning methods have existed for decades, but with new technologies that can allow it to happen in virtual environments there is resurgence in interest. A 10-point list suggests what constitutes authentic learning:

“has real-world relevance;is ill-defined, requiring students to define the tasks and subtasks needed to complete the activity;

comprises complex tasks to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time;

provides the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources;

provides the opportunity to collaborate;

provides the opportunity to reflect;

can be integrated and applied across different subject areas and lead beyond domain-specific outcomes;

is seamlessly integrated with assessment;

creates polished products valuable in their own right rather than as preparation for something else; and

allows competing solutions and a diversity of outcomes.” (3)

 

While creating a course or instruction program that offers opportunities for authentic learning is more time consuming for both the instructor and student, research supports that students cite relevance as the key value to authentic learning in the classroom. It creates the linkage between course content and how a student envisions and experiences a possible future career. As the report states, “students say they are more likely to engage with the material because they do not regard it as busy work.”

Two skills that all educators know students will need in the 21st century workplace are cross-disciplinary problem solving and critical thinking. Achieving success at both involves gaining proficiency as a researcher. You can’t solve problems or think critically about them if you don’t have high quality information with which to work. Temple University librarians are skilled in helping faculty to develop authentic research assignments that integrate real problem solving into coursework. Working collaboratively, faculty and librarians can develop research assignments that are far more than “busy work” for students. Great research assignments, like the research memories of the author, should be “sticky” so that they stay with students throughout their years at Temple and beyond. Talk to a librarian about constructing a research assignment that is made to stick.

-Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian

CBS 3 Donates Video Archives to Libraries

Posted on by
Reply

CBS 3 DONATES VAST VIDEO ARCHIVES TO TEMPLE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Philadelphia, September 26, 2007 – CBS 3 (KYW-TV) will donate its vast Video archives, a virtual diary of the history of the region during the last thirty years, to Temple University’s Paley Library, CBS 3 President and General Manager Michael Colleran and Temple University President Dr. Ann Weaver Hart announced today.

The station’s collection of more than 20,000 videotapes, which includes daily local newscasts and video clips from the last thirty years of Eyewitness News as well as 15 years of the local lifestyle show, Evening Magazine, will be housed in Temple University Libraries Urban Archives and, once catalogued, will be available to students and local residents alike.

Colleran officially presented the videotapes to Dr. Hart in a ceremony held today at Paley Library.

The station’s archival tape contain many of the most memorable moments in Philadelphia history – from the Pope John Paul II’s visit to Philadelphia in 1979 and the Phillies World Series victory in 1980 to the MOVE bombing in 1985 and the Blizzards of 1983 and 1996. Many national and international stories are also included from the Reagan years in the While House to the fall of Communism in Europe.

“The University is honored to be chosen as guardian of what amounts to a historical record of the last three decades of the 20th century in Philadelphia,” Hart says. “We hope that this collection will encourage others to preserve this type of material, so that future generations will have a first-hand account of the times in which we lived.”

“Anyone interested in the history and culture of 20th century Philadelphia must use the incredible resources held in the Urban Archives,” Dean of University Libraries Larry Alford adds. “Those resources are deepest for the first 80 years of the 20th century because of the archives of The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, which ceased publication in 1982. The KYW footage will fill in the gap of that last 20 years.”

Colleran says that, in addition to chronicling local history, the tapes are also a dynamic example of the evolution of local television since the 1970s. “Not only do we see the evolution of news coverage from the anchor desk to live coverage in the field, but we can witness the birth of a whole new genre in television through Evening Magazine, a program that was imitated across the country and became a precursor to such shows as Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and the celebrity journalism of today.”

The station’s contribution of the tapes to Temple University Libraries corresponds with its relocation earlier this year from its 35 year-home on Independence Mall to its new state-of-the-art High Definition studios in the Spring Garden section of Philadelphia. Coincidentally, this is not the first time astation relocation has benefited the University. When KYW moved from its Walnut Street studios to Independence Mall in 1972, the company donated its building there to the University which used it as a Center City campus for many years.

CBS 3 is part of CBS Television Stations, a division of CBS Corporation.

Watch the CBS 3 (KYW-TV) coverage of this momentous event in Philadelphia history online.

Index of Christian Art

Posted on by
Reply

The library now has The Index of Christian Art, the result of a project begun by Professor Charles Rufus Morey at Princeton University in 1917. He believed that the development of Early Christian art could be more deeply understood through the study of themes rather than artistic styles, which during the Greco-Roman period were too “uniform” (more information on the ICA). From a humble beginning of a few shoe boxes of index cards he crafted an indexing system which today falls under five broad thematic groups, Figures, Scenes, Nature, Objects, and Miscellany.

The current online database covers all additions to the collection since 1991 when digitization began and thirty percent of the items indexed before 1991. It grows yearly and the retrospective digitization will eventually bring all pre-1991 content into the database. In addition to indexing Christian art, the database contains over 60,000 images both in color and black and white. For those who need to examine content that has not been digitized, they can still go to Princeton, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Utrecht, or the Vatican to view the entire collection. The Index of Christian Art includes works of art from the early years of Christianity up through 1400 AD and recently the decision was made to expand the coverage up through the sixteenth century.

The Index of Christian Art contains three different record types, which are called “databases” or simply “bases”: Work of Art records (over 57,000), Subject records (over 28,000), and Bibliographic records (over 57,000). The Work of Art records provide detailed descriptions and links to the images. Although there are multiple ways to search and browse, I found it confusing for the novice user (myself) since it’s often hard to distinguish between the actual record types and the individual fields in the records, especially when constructing a search and interpreting the results. I trust that greater knowledge of Early Christian art and more familiarity with the database would ease this burden a little (if not, feel free to let me know). The new user should start with the Multi-Base search because it lets you search across all fields and you can select which record type you’d like to search. Your results are unambiguous: if you search Work of Art records (or Subject or Bibliography records) you’ll get just that type of record in the results set.

Index of Christian Art is a nice addition to our other art bibliographic and image databases, which can be found on the Arts & Humanities database list. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

—Fred Rowland

JSTOR vs. ABC-CLIO

Posted on by
Reply

JSTOR is the premier scholarly journal database. It is a full-text, interdisciplinary archive of only the most highly respected journal titles. By comparison, ABC-CLIO’s two scholarly databases — America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts— seem to be less frequently used, even by historians. There are several reasons for this, but perhaps the most important is that JSTOR provides direct access to the full-text, full-page image of all articles in the database. Consider, however, the following advantages of the ABC-CLIO databases:

1) America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts between them index over a thousand scholarly journals, including 65 of the 72 history titles available in JSTOR. A researcher using the ABC-CLIO databases will thus find nearly all citations to JSTOR articles and thousands of additional citations not available in JSTOR.

2) The Libraries’ new TUlink service enables two- or three-click access to the full-text of thousands of articles indexed by America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts. This means that JSTOR’s previous “full-text advantage,” described above, no longer holds.

3) Citations to articles in America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts contain human-generated subject headings; JSTOR’s article citations do not. Why does this make a difference? A researcher using the ABC-CLIO databases could perform a subject search for “Gates, Horatio,” easily finding all 34 citations to articles about the Revolutionary War general. This type of search simply cannot be done in JSTOR.

4) JCR Online assesses the impact of scholarly journals on various academic disciplines. The higher a journal’s “impact factor” the more important that journal is within its discipline. Between them, the two ABC-CLIO databases index all sixteen journals identified by JCR Online as having the highest impact factors in History. These journals are: Environmental History, American Historical Review,Journal of American History, Journal of Modern History, Social Science History,Past & Present, Journal of African History, Comparative Studies in Society & History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, History Workshop Journal, International Review of Social History, Ethnohistory, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Zeitgeschichte, and Mouvement Social. JSTOR indexes only twelve of these same sixteen “high impact” history journals.

It certainly is not my objective to sour anyone on the use of JSTOR, which by any measure is a stellar scholarly resource. The point of this post is rather to say that both databases have much to recommend them. The choice of which to use ultimately depends upon the individual needs and preferences of the researcher. A comprehensive history article search will likely require the use of both.

Do you have a favorite history database?

—David C. Murray

Islam and the Byzantines

Posted on by
Reply

Index Islamicus is a great source for Islam, obviously, but it’s also good for all the lands and peoples that have come into contact with Islam, which is a pretty vast field. Look at the six citations I quickly retrieved from Index Islamicus and downloaded into Refworks.

  • Islam and the Byzantines (Take note of the TUlink icon on the far right of the citations that will lead you to options for obtaining the complete article or book.)

—Fred Rowland

Introducing: TUlink

Posted on by
Reply

Have you encountered frustration in fetching the full text of an article when using the library’s research databases? We have some good news for you. We are pleased to announce the arrival of TUlink, a new service of the Temple University Libraries.

With TUlink, the research process is greatly streamlined. TUlink acts as a bridge between a citation in a database and the full-text of the article in a different database–removing a number of formerly necessary steps.

When the citation you find in a database doesn’t have the full-text immediately attached to it, look for the TUlink icon:

icon120-25.jpg

Clicking on this icon will perform a search of our full-text resources and when possible give you an “Article” link directly to the full-text of the article. In other cases you will see a “Journal” link to the electronic copy of the journal in which your citation was published. TUlink can also get you to information on journals held in the library on paper.

tulink-blog.jpg

If no full-text is available you will be offered an interlibrary loan link to request the article from another library.

TUlink is a work in progress. Currently enabled databases include all the EBSCO databases (Academic Search Premier, ERIC, MLA, PsycInfo, etc) and CSA databases (Criminal Justice Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts, etc) and numerous others. Other databases will be enabled on an ongoing basis.

See more details on using TUlink.

—Derik A Badman, Digital Services Librarian