Monday E-Resource Medley

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Another bunch of new electronic resources available for your research needs:

—Science of Synthesis: “Provides online access to one of the most in-depth authoritative information sources available on synthetic methodology. Information is available on 18,000 generally applicable experimental procedures, including 180,000 reactions and 800,000 structures. Also included is the searchable full-text of the various editions of the highly esteemed, almost 200 year-old Houben-Weyl.”

—International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text: “This database comprises a fully indexed, cross-referenced and annotated databank of over 60,000 journal articles, books, book articles and dissertation abstracts on all aspects of theatre and performance in 126 countries, as well as full text for 100 titles, including Canadian Theatre Review, Dance Chronicle, Dance Teacher, Modern Drama, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Research in Dance Education, Research in Drama Education, Studies in Theatre and Performance, TDR: The Drama Review, Theater, and many more. Additional full text available includes more than 50 books & monographs such as Art and the Performance of Memory, Avant Garde Theatre, British Realist Theatre, Community Theatre, History of European Drama and Theatre, Learning Through Theatre, Opera, Performance Theory, Popular Theatres of Nineteenth Century France, Shakespeare, Theory and Performance, Sourcebook on Feminist Theatre and Performance, Theatre and the World, Twentieth-Century Actor Training, Who’s Who in Contemporary World Theatre, World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre and many more.”

—AnthroSource: “Full-text of 32 current and past journals from the American Anthropological Association.”
—Columbia Earthscape: “This interdisciplinary resource connects the Earth and environmental sciences with their social, political, and economic dimensions. Students, teachers, and librarians will find a dynamic, inquiry-based educational resource, featuring illustrated lectures, animations, video and image banks, exercises and labs, syllabi, and basic textbook readings. Columbia Earthscape also gives policy makers and professionals a robust, carefully selected and assessed collection of environmental legislation, regional studies, international environmental documents, and white papers. And it offers scientists an educational venue in which to incorporate their research as well as a growing archive of journal articles, journal abstracts, conference literature, full-text monographs and selected chapters, and online data sets.”
—Mental Measurements Yearbook Online: “Produced by the Buros Institute at the University of Nebraska, the Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY) provides users with a comprehensive guide to over 2,000 contemporary testing instruments. Designed for an audience ranging from novice test consumers to experienced professionals, the MMY series contains information essential for a complete evaluation of test products within such diverse areas as psychology, education, business, and leadership. All MMY entries contain descriptive information (e.g., test purpose, publisher, pricing) and edited review(s) written by leading content area experts. To be included in the MMY, a test must be commercially available, be published in the English language, and be new or revised since it last appeared in the series.” MMY Online covers Volume 9 to the present.
—National Journal’s Policy Central: “Includes the following resources from the National Journal Group:

  • National Journal – Read the leading nonpartisan weekly on politics, policy and government.
  • The Hotline – Track American politics and campaigns with coverage of each day’s political news.
  • CongressDaily – Follow the key players and legislative process on Capitol Hill.
  • TechnologyDaily – Monitor important news and trends in information technology politics and policy.
  • Almanac of American Politics – Get analysis and data on every member of Congress and their states and districts.
  • Markup Reports & Bill Status – Get complete coverage of every congressional markup session, as well as constantly updated reports on key legislation.
  • Ad Spotlight – Explore political and issue television ads with streaming audio or video.
  • Poll Track – Start your research with a database of public opinion surveys from across the country.”

 

Please direct any questions to your departmental librarian or Ask a Librarian.

—Derik Badman

Library Depository

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A number of changes will be underway soon with the completion this summer of Temple’s new Library Depository, a closed-stack shelving and retrieval facility.

Over the course of the summer, thousands of lesser-used volumes will be relocated to the Depository, thus allowing Temple Libraries to centralize a number of collections, expand services, and refurbish Paley Library’s stack areas with expanded study and collaboration space. Many research libraries are already using similar closed-stack facilities to preserve their growing research collections and open up space within the library buildings to meet the varied needs and expectations of contemporary students and scholars.

Materials in the Depository will be listed in the online catalog with a conveniently linked online request form. They will be retrieved by library staff and available within a quick turn-around time.

In conjunction with these changes, several branch libraries will close over the summer, providing the opportunity to expand services and reintegrate collections that have been split for years because of limited space. The Zahn Library’s last day of operation will be Friday, May 12, 2006, the last day of spring semester. Physics Library will be next, followed by Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematical Sciences. An exact schedule has not been set, but it is expected that the closings will be completed and the library materials relocated by the end of the summer sessions.

An FAQ with full details about the Depository and related services is posted on the library website. Advisories and progress reports will be featured in the library blog as the transitions proceed.

For more details about the Library Depository and the related changes, please see the Temple Times article published on April 27, 2006.

depository.jpe

Here’s a recent view of the construction underway as moveable compact shelving carriages are assembled. New photos will be added occasionally as work progresses.

— Carol Lang

Library Prize Winners Announced

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Please join the Libraries on Friday, April 28, at 4:30 p.m. in the lecture hall of Paley Library for the awarding of the 2nd Annual Library Prizes for Undergraduate Research. Everyone is encouraged to attend the reception.

Winners of the 2nd Annual $1,000 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research, Temple University (in alphabetical order)

Ryan Drummond
“Interstate Station Stop: A Voyage into the
American Frontier Myth”
Architecture 442
Professors John J. Pron, primary advisor
Sneha Patel, secondary advisor
Kate Wingert-Playdon
Kate Cleveland

Steven J. Horowitz
“As Boundaries Fade: The Social Contract in Cyberspace”
Philosophy 298
Professor Paul Taylor, Philosophy

Symbol Lai
“Defining Abolitionism: Antislavery Resistance among
Philadelphia’s African American Community and Women.”
History W397
Professor Elizabeth Varon, History
Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order): 
These will receive $100 bookstore gift certificates.

Denene Michele Wambach
“Crimes Against Civil Liberty: An Analysis of the United
States Government’s Involvement in Guantanamo Bay.”
Political Science 391
Professors Mark Pollack & Megan Mullin, Political Science

Victoria White
“Queer Race in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd”
English 282
Professor Suzanne Gauch, English
The Library Prize was established by the Temple University Libraries to encourage more and better use of its resources and collections, to advance information literacy, and to promote academic excellence at Temple University. Hearty congratulations to all students who submitted their applications into the

CAB Database

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The CAB Database is now available as a database from EBSCO Host to all Temple University faculty, staff and students. CAB Abstracts CAB Abstracts is the most comprehensive bibliographic, abstracting and indexing database in its field. CAB Abstracts covers the applied life sciences, including agriculture, forestry, human nutrition, veterinary medicine and the environment. CAB Abstracts includes molecular biology, genetics, biotechnology, breeding, taxonomy, physiology and other aspects of pure science relating to organisms of agricultural, veterinary or environmental importance. Read more about this diverse and content rich resource here. There is something for most people in this database. Those with any questions or comments about this resource are most welcome to contact me at 215-204-4584. —David Dillard

Library Prize Awards Reception

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The awards reception for the 2nd Annual Library Prize for Undergraduate Research will be held in Paley Library’s Lecture Hall at 4:30p.m. on Friday, April 28th. The winning students will be present to receive their awards, accompanied by their sponsoring professors. Refreshments and hors d’oeuvres will be served. Everyone is invited. Direct questions to Gretchen Sneff at 215-204-4724 or gretchen.sneff@temple.edu –Derik A Badman

Historical Newspapers

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The library is pleased to announce our new access to Proquest Historical Newspapers, encompassing complete full-text coverage of the New York Times, 1851-2003 (more recent access available through LexisNexis Academic), and the Wall Street Journal, 1889-1989 (more recent access available through Factiva). The papers are available cover to cover (including advertisements) in digital images. They are full-text searchable and searching can be limited to date ranges as well as type of article from news and editorials to editorial cartoons and photos to obituaries and marriage notices. Electronic access to these newspapers adds a range of historical news that was previously only available to us on microfilm. Students will be particularly aided by access to the New York Times of the mid-twentieth century, an era which is frequently requested by undergraduate researchers. —Derik A Badman

Imaging Culture – Latest Exhibit in Paley

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“Imaging Culture” is the title and visual anthropology is the subject of the current exhibit on the main floor of Paley Library, from April 10 — May 31, 2006. Photography books, cameras, stereoscope photos and other items from the library’s collections and from the Visual Communication Laboratory of the Department of Anthropology are on display. The exhibit was designed to accompany the Mediating Practices conference held at Temple University on April 11-14, 2006 and was prepared by Anabelle Rodriguez Gonzalez, a Visual Communications student, in collaboration with librarian subject specialists Jenifer Baldwin and Gregory McKinney, and Tom Whitehead and Carol Ann Harris of the library’s Special Collections department. The Mediating Practices conference sponsors are Temple University’s Graduate School, The College of Liberal Arts, the School of Communications and Theater, the Center for the Humanities, and the Philadelphia Cinema and Media Seminar (PCMS). — Carol Ann Harris

Wednesday’s New E-Resources

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Another round of new and expanded resources:

—Kraus Curriculum Development Library: An index of over 6000 curriculum materials for K-12 and Adult Basic Education, more than 200 in full-text. Includes curriculum, standards, frameworks, educational objectives, instructional strategies, and evaluation techniques. (Updated monthly)

—American Periodicals Series Online: The publisher describes the resources: “This unique and valuable collection contains digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals that originated between 1741, when Andrew Bradford’s American Magazine and Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine were launched, and 1900. Deriving from the acclaimed American Periodicals Series microform collection, APS Online features over 1,100 periodicals spanning nearly 200 years-from colonial times to the advent of American involvement in World War II. Titles range from America’s first scientific journal, Medical Repository, to popular magazines like Vanity Fair and Ladies’ Home Journal.” See this longer description.

—CINAHL and Pre-CINAHL: The library has added access to CINAHL through EBSCOhost. CINAHL indexes articles on nursing and allied health from over 1,600 journals dating back to 1982. Pre-CINAHL provides access to articles that are being added to the CINAHL database. These are articles that do not yet have complete indexingt and that will be added to CINAHL upon indexing completion.

—MEDLINE: The library has also added EBSCOhost and Web of Science access to MEDLINE, each providing its own attendant extra features, such as linking between full-text in other EBSCO databases or Web of Science links to open source journals.

—IEEE Explore: Expanded access to IEEE has increased our access to over 120 full-text journals, as well as transactions, conference titles, and standards from 1988 to the present with some items going back as far as 1950.

Please direct any questions to your departmental librarian or Ask a Librarian.

—Derik A Badman

Integrating Information Literacy into the Curriculum

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Educators face the challenge of helping students master a set of abilities collectively termed “Information Literacy” by the library profession – see ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, Information Literacy Defined. The push to promote information literacy within libraries is part of a larger educational reform movement that sees the need for new ways of reaching students and assessing student learning. The ultimate goal is to help students become effective users of information in any format and place.

In brief, information literate persons are able to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” (ibid.). Note that “locate” is only one small part of this definition. Information literacy involves so much more than instructing students on how to access a book in the Diamond catalog, or showing them how to search theHistorical Abstracts. Rather, true Information Literacy involves an entire set of critical thinking skills that can only be developed over time and through direct engagement with the academic curriculum. It involves practice and lots of hands-on work.

Librarians see the need for information literacy more keenly than most, since we interact informally with students every day at the reference desk. Librarians, in other words, experience first-hand the inability of many students to evaluate and contextualize the increasingly massive amounts of data now available online, in print, and in other formats. Roy Rosenzweig, historian at George Mason University, recently wrote that “for many students, the abundance of primary sources can be more puzzling and disorienting than liberating and enlightening” (“Digital Archives Are a Gift,” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 24, 2005). He goes on to say that students often see large amounts of primary sources as “transparent reflections of a historical ‘reality’; not, as a historian would, as imperfect refractions” of a specific place and time (ibid.). Prior to about 1990, students were forced to consult a prescribed set of resources assigned to them by the professor (or suggested by a librarian). Today this is often no longer the case, and regardless of how many times faculty and librarians insist students not use random hits generated by Google, many just aren’t “getting it”. Thus, as Rosenzweig says, “we have done much better at democratizing access to resources than at providing the kind of instruction that would give meaning to those resources” (ibid.).

Classroom discussion and activities around these (and other) themes and outcomes promote information literacy:

1) The importance of seeking out background information to help contextualize a topic;
2) The difference between primary vs. secondary sources in history and other disciplines;
3) Popular vs. scholarly publications, and why the difference is important;
4) The appropriate use of different types of information media, such as books, journals, and online resources; and
5) Evaluation of information resources to assess appropriateness for college-level work.

Again, none of this will likely “stick” with students unless such discussions and activities take place in the classroom and are integrated directly into the curriculum. If you are a Temple faculty member in history who wishes to work more closely with the library on ways to further integrate these ideas into the classroom, I would certainly welcome hearing from you. Instructors in other disciplines should feel free to contact their own librarian subject specialist. Typically, the best opportunity for collaboration between instructor and librarian is “at the point of need,” or at that point when a student needs information for a specific research paper or project.

A big thank you to the many capstone (and other) instructors who have already worked hard to develop information literacy skills in their students. For a great deal more on this subject, including additional outcomes and specific assignment suggestions, please visit Integrating Information Literacy into Temple Courses.

—David C. Murray

LexisNexis Statistical Universe

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The Library has added to its subscription databases a new source of statistics. It is called Statistical Universe (from LexisNexis Academic). For many years we have had the print indexes and the accompanying microfiche collections, and now we online access. Is it the combined product of three different resources: American Statistics Index (U.S. Federal government statistics) (1973-), Statistical Reference Index (U.S. private sector statistics – organizations, commercial publishers, businesses, university research bureaus, states)(1980-), and Index to International Statistics (statistics from major intergovernmental organizations). The combined database allows searching across all types of producers of statistics and online viewing of most results. Here is the list of publishers and most recent contents of the database (we have acquired BOTH the “Basic Collection” and the “Research Edition”). I urge you to take a look at some of the resources that are offered from the publishers – just click on the name of the agency/publisher, and the list of the most recent titles is displayed. Some extraordinary statistical resources are available from publishers like the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Electronic Industries Alliance, eMarketer Inc., Employee Benefit Research Institute, National Restaurant Association, Plunkett Research, Strategy Research Corporation, Television Bureau of Advertising, and the Urban Institute. —Barbara Wright