The Teaching Professor

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The Libraries have recently acquired a site license to The Teaching Professor, an online newsletter designed to assist faculty with the practical side of teaching. The Teaching Professor helps instructors to:

  • Overcome obstacles to effective teaching
  • Stay abreast of the latest pedagogical research
  • Hear what’s working for colleagues “in the trenches”
  • Hone skills and stay on top of teaching innovations
  • Truly connect with students

Here’s an excerpt from an article titled Faculty Self-Disclosures in the College Classroom from the April, 2007 issue: “While interviewing university faculty for a study about classroom communication, ‘Jim,’ a professor of history, made this comment about a colleague he had observed teaching: ‘I was really amazed, when I saw him teach, how little of his personality you see.’ This starkly contrasted with his perception of his own teaching style, about which he said, ‘I try to use humor a lot. My dad says I just think funny, you know, and I do; it’s hard for me not to joke around.’ This comment started me wondering about how much of ourselves we let our students see.”

The articles in The Teaching Professor are brief and to the point. Worth a look.

—David C. Murray

Web of Science Backfiles Added

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We are pleased to announce that Temple University Libraries has acquired Web of Science backfiles to the year 1900. The breakdown by discipline is:

  • Arts & Humanities back to 1975
  • Social Sciences back to 1956
  • Science back to 1900

Web of Science is a repository of historic, multi-disciplinary journal literature. The backfiles are critical to locating a wealth of useful historic source and citation information. Of the 50 most highly cited items in Web of Science, more than 60% were published over 20 years ago. Via the powerful linking capabilities of the Web, retrospective data becomes easily available and maximizes serendipitous discovery. —Kathy Szigeti

Start Better Study Habits By Avoiding All-Nighters

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With the spring semester starting soon it may be a good time to share with students, and their instructors, some timely tips for better study habits. The Study Hacks blog recently featured a post titled “Five Bad Study Habits You Should Resolve to Avoid in 2008“. Well, it is the time of the year for resolutions. Their five bad habits to eliminate include: (1) studying without a plan; (2) skipping classes; (3) rote review; (4) studying after midnight; and (5) not taking notes while reading. Read the post for more details on how and why to eliminate these bad study habits.

And speaking of staying up late to study (item 4), particularly at exam time, a researcher at St. Lawrence University studied the correlation between student sleep time and their grade-point averages. Students reported that they had pulled at least one all-nighter during a semester and that those who did it regularly had lower GPAs. Sounds like avoiding all-nighters is a good way to begin improving study habits in 2008.

-Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian

New Platform for ABC-CLIO Databases

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The two ABC-CLIO databases, America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts, are now available on the familiar EBSCOhost platform. Advantages of having these core history databases on Ebsco include multiple database searching; easy linking to full-text databases such as JSTOR; personalized folders, a part of My EBSCOhost, for those who choose to create personalized accounts; the Historical Period Limiter, a way to find articles that discuss an event or events that occurred within a specific time frame; and a new cited reference search encompassing both databases. This last feature can be used in conjunction with Web of Science to more accurately gauge the importance to the field of history of any refereed journal article. —David C. Murray

Sandi Thompson is Head of Suburban Campus Libraries

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s_thompson[1].jpe It is with great pleasure that I inform you that Sandi Thompson has accepted the position of Head of Suburban Campus Libraries, effective December 3, 2007.

Sandi began working in the Temple University Libraries in 1969 as a Bibliographic Assistant, first in the Acquisitions Department followed by service in the Business Library, Government Documents, and finally in the Mathematical Sciences Library. In 1985 after earning her M.S.L.S. at Drexel, Sandi was named the Bibliographic Services Librarian at the Ambler Campus Library. In that role, she has been deeply involved in the Ambler campus and its library as well as in many services and activities on the main campus. She has been very active professionally in regional and national library organizations. Since September 2006, she has served as the Interim Head of Suburban Campus Libraries.

Sandi looks forward to continuing her work with faculty and students at both the Ambler and Tyler campuses. She can be contacted at sandi@temple.edu or by telephone at 267-468-8645.

Larry P. Alford, Dean of University Libraries

Get Great Teaching Tips

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…from The Teaching Professor.

Rare is the instructor who hasn’t encountered a challenge in the classroom. Equally rare is the instructor who couldn’t benefit from proven techniques shared by colleagues who’ve discovered ways to enhance the teaching and learning process. Within higher education, a respected and popular source that faculty use to share their ideas and best practices in teaching and learning is a publication called The Teaching Professor. Published 10 times a year, it incorporates into 6-8 pages of fast reading tips and techniques for everything from better tests and quizzes to improved classroom discussions to effective technology integration.

Temple University Libraries has just made it easy for all University instructors to be up-to-date with every new issue of The Teaching Professor. The Libraries now offer institutional access to the electronic version of the publication, both on and off campus. There is also an audio MP3 version of each issue. You can directly access The Teaching Professor here.

There you can examine the latest issue, any issue in the archive, or you can search for articles on a particular topic (e.g., lectures, quizzes). The November 2007 issue features articles on engaging large science classes, dealing with students who participate too much, and making the syllabus more than a contract.

In addition, interested faculty and administrators can sign up to receive e-mail alerts of the latest issues. To do so, register using this account information:

Voucher code: TEMPLE
PIN Number: 2310

-Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian

Juan Williams Audio Interview

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On Monday, October 22, Temple University Libraries, the College of Liberal Arts, the General Education Program and the Office of the Provost welcomed distinguished journalist and NPR Senior Correspondent Juan Williams to a packed house.

Williams, one of America’s leading political writers and thinkers, gave his engaging lecture, “Eyes on the Prize: The Truths of American Race Relations” to a capacity crowd in Paley Library Lecture Hall. Williams is a Senior Correspondent for National Public Radio, a political analyst for Fox Television and a regular panelist on FoxNews Sunday. He has written prize-winning columns and editorials for The Washington Post. Williams has also worked extensively in the documentary medium, having won an Emmy Award for his television writing.

After his lecture, Williams sat down with reference librarian Fred Rowland to talk about his most recent book, Enough : the phony leaders, dead-end movements, and culture of failure that are undermining Black America– and what we can do about it. The interview was recorded and is available as a downloadable mp3 file:

Listen to the audio (22:00, 5.2MB mp3 file)

You can also subscribe to our podcast feed for future audio content from the Temple University Libraries.

-Nicole Restaino, Library Communications Specialist

Featured Database: Gale Virtual Reference Library

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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.
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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

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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

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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.

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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