Alexander Street Press has begun adding the full-run of the Black Panther Party newspaper to the Black Thought & Culture collection. http://www.alexanderstreet4.com/cgi-bin/asp/bltc/documentidx.pl?sourceid=S1 2,500 pages of Black Panther oral histories will also be added to the collection. -Al Vara, Reference
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
We have added substantial back file access to Nature and several Nature Research Journals. Our online coverage for Nature is now from 1987 through the present, adding more than 37,000 articles that can be obtained online. Nature is the top ranked* multidisciplinary science journal. Nature Publishing Group journals are some of the world’s premier information resources for the basic biological and physical sciences.
The Nature research journals are:
Nature Biotechnology. v.1, 1983- present. Ranked #1 in Biotechnology and Applied Microbiology.
Nature Genetics. v.1, 1992 – present. Ranked #1 in Genetics and Heredity.
Nature Medicine. v.1, 1995 – present. Ranked #1 in the Medicine, Research and Experimental category, #2 in Cell Biology, and #2 in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. v.1, 1994 – present. Ranked #3 in Biophysics, #10 in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and #10 in Cell Biology.
All journals may be accessed via Journal Finder and Diamond.
*Rankings based on impact factors in the 2004 Journal Citation Reports.
–Laura Lane, Science Librarian
Many of the Libraries’ electronic databases index newspapers, magazines, and journal articles. One unique database, Reference Universe, indexes thousands of print reference works such as dictionaries, handbooks, and encyclopedias. The database now also indexes web-based reference works. Why is this important?
Suppose you are assigned a research paper on the impact of religion during the Han Dynasty. Maybe you’ve heard that the Han period represents a “Golden Age” in Chinese history. Beyond that, though, the Han are a mystery. Obtaining background information now becomes critical to both your understanding of the topic as well as your ability to properly research it. That’s where Reference Universe comes in! A quick search of the Reference Universe database for the phrase “Han Dynasty” reveals citations for Temple-owned reference works including the Encyclopedia of Religion and War. Even better, Reference Universe indicates that there are no less than 15 entries in the back-of-the-book index to the Han Dynasty. Examples include “Confucianism, Han Dynasty” on pp. 82-87, and “Legalism and Confucianism–Han Dynasty” on pp. 83, 84, and 106. The next step is simply to walk into Paley Library’s reference stacks and retrieve the encyclopdia in question.
As mentioned above, Reference Universe now goes one step further by both indexing and providing direct links to Temple-owned online reference works from ABC-CLIO, Oxford, and netLibrary, among others. It’s never been so easy to search and retrieve the important background information critical to good research.
–David C. Murray
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.
Speaking of wikis, the Libraries new instant message (IM) reference serviceAskTULibrary is one of only a handful of libraries doing such listed on Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki.
Another place our virtual reference services are appearing on the web is in records for OpenWorldCat. This project comes out of the WorldCat database of library holdings (accessible from here). OpenWorldCat opens up the records in this database to discovery by search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Searching for terms that match books will bring up results labeled “Find in a Library” that link to an OpenWorldCat record with information on libraries that hold the book in a specific region (based on zip code). When Temple University appears in these records the information link takes the reader to our Ask a Librarian page. Hopefully this will allow a few more Google searchers to discover their local library and its wealth of holdings.
To see an example go to this pre-made search and click on the first or second result.
–Derik A Badman
An interesting article in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education (51.45 (15 July 2005): A35) (the online version may require a password, inquire from one of us and we can give it to you) about using wikis in the classroom. It focuses on professor Mark Phillipson’s use of a class wiki to get his students writing about Romantic poetry. The article briefly discusses the uses and benefits of a wiki for annotation, discussion, writing, and class participation. If you don’t know what a wiki is (and that article doesn’t explain it well enough for you) check out this article from the most famous wiki, the Wikipedia. Wikipedia has garnered a lot of media attention (especially from librarians) because it is a publicly editable (anyone can edit it) online encyclopedia. Like any other reference source it has its pluses and minuses, but many fear that the lack of traditional peer-review negates its utility as a reference for information. –Derik A Badman
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
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
Most of you should already know that the University is switching over to a new TUid number in July. Everyone is being issued a new ID card, called an OWL Card, which has your new TUid printed on the bottom right corner. It is a nine digit number that will replace almost all uses of the Social Security number in the University. This means that in the library you will now use your new TUid number and OWL Card for: a) Checking out books. You will be expected to have your OWL Card to check out books. Previous to September 30, 2005 we will still accept the old Temple ID card. b) Requesting books through PALCI. c) Requesting Intralibrary loans, Interlibrary Loans, or placing recalls, as well as most of the other services with online forms. d) Logging into My Library Account to see your currently checked out items, renew items, or create saved searches. All these functions will require your new TUid number starting on the weekend of July 1st.