In an effort to gather information about the usage of the Temple University Libraries’ electronic resources, an occasional web-based survey will be launched on Tuesday, August 31. The survey form will appear when connecting to any electronic resource. That includes the library catalog, the journal databases, music libraries, electronic books, etc. The online web survey must be completed in order to gain access to the desired electronic resource. This four question survey, while creating a momentary disruption, will only be conducted for two consecutive hours per month through the next academic year. The survey is anonymous and will coincide with short on-site surveys of a similar nature being offered at Paley Library.

The University administration has requested that we conduct this survey in order to gain more information about how the institutional investment in electronic information resources contributes to our scholars’ and researchers’ capacity to perform research that leads to new discoveries. While this survey will create some minimal disruption in the short run, the data gathered will be of great benefit to our instituition in the long run. Therefore we will greatly appreciate your understanding and cooperation if and when you are asked to complete the survey form.

Should you have further questions, an FAQ is appended to the online survey instrument or you can contact the Controller’s Office which is sponsoring the survey.

I was recently reading this article, Wealthy Reap Rewards While Those Who Work Lose, and came upon this paragraph: “‘The nation’s jobs crisis is so catastrophic that, unless Congress acts on the scale of the New Deal, millions of Americans will experience extremely long periods of unemployment for many years ahead,’ Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, told a panel of the Committee on Ways and Means recently.” I wanted to read exactly what Lawrence Mishel said in his testimony before the Committee. This provided a perfect opportunity to use LexisNexis Congressional, which indexes (and often provides full-text to) committee transcripts and hearings. Here’s how to do it:

1. Go into LexisNexis Congressional and click on the Advanced Search tab
2. Make sure just the Hearings box is checked
3. From the search dropdown box, select Witness
4. In the search field type: Mishel, Lawrence
5. Click Search And, Voila! You’ll get this citation: [Job Creation], CIS-NO: Not Yet Assigned, SOURCE: Committee on Appropriations. Senate, DOC-TYPE: Hearing , DATE: Jan. 21, 2010., CIS/Index

From there, it’s easy to find your way to the full-text. Watch this SCREENCAST to see how it’s done.

Although fewer and fewer students are taking courses under the old Core Curriculum, there are still a fair number of transfer students who are not yet part of the GenEd curriculum. All of these students still taking the Core Curriculum were required to take and pass a library research tutorial called TILT, Temple’s Information Literacy Tutorial. But no more. As part of the President’s initiative to reduce the burdens of the University’s dysfunctional rules and policies, a decision was made to eliminate the TILT requirement. Here is the exact language of the Committee that voted on the change: The Education Programs and Policies Committee of the Faculty Senate agreed to revise the Core Curriculum at their November 19th meeting: • the Temple Information Literacy Tutorial (TILT) will no longer be required to graduate. This change is effective immediately, i.e. this applies to Core students graduating January 2010 and forward. Since this is effective immediately the Temple University Libraries will remove the presence of TILT from our website. As we move forward, current and new students will learn how to become effective researchers through the GenEd program. Though TILT served us well and is now going away, self-guided tutorials do have their place in learning effective research methods. We will continue to develop instructional tutorials and other materials that will help students to become better researchers through self-guided methods.