WSU Libraries' News Feed for DDP and CDPE

Major changes to Library Policies! (Good news!)

scales@wsu.edu (Jane Scales) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:23:20 GMT

DDP Students,

The announcement below essentially means that you can now request books from anywhere in the world for home delivery at no cost to you.

Try a search in WSU WorldCat. This new database will tell you what the WSU Libraries, SUMMIT libraries, and libraries worldwide own. We are working on instructional material to help you learn how to use this new service.

Here is a link to a handout about WSU WorldCat.

ANNOUNCEMENT:

EffectiveAugust 15, 2009, all WSU faculty, staff and students will be able torequest copies of journal articles that the WSU Libraries do not own without paying the $3 fee. Requestsfor books and other items that must be returned will also be availableat no cost to the user, and whether they arrived as an InterlibraryLoan or are from a WSU collection, they can be delivered to WSU officelocations.

Good News from the Libraries: Interlibrary Loan Fee to Be Eliminated

jakobwithak@gmail.com (Jakob Wells) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:50:59 GMT

Since recent budget cuts have hurt departments all across the University, the Libraries would like to show our continued support for the university community by improving your access to both our own collections and those of other libraries.

Our own collections:

If WSU owns a journal article you need in print, and it's not available electronically through the "Find It" link, you will be able to request the item and receive a scanned copy via email at no cost.

If WSU owns a book you want, you can ask it be checked out to you and delivered to your WSU office location. Of course, if you prefer to pick your materials up at the Libraries, we will be glad to see you!

Other libraries' collections:

The $3 fee for interlibrary loan has always covered just a fraction of the actual cost to the Libraries, which is closer to $50 per transaction. Another service, Article Reach, has allowed us to provide subsidized access to journal literature over the past two years without charging the user, and this service has been very popular. Here is the very good news:

Effective August 15, 2009, all WSU faculty, staff and students will be able to request copies of journal articles that the WSU Libraries do not own without paying the $3 fee.

Requests for books and other items that must be returned will also be available at no cost to the user, and whether they arrived as an Interlibrary Loan or are from a WSU collection, they can be delivered to WSU office locations. Graduate students who are able to receive mail at their departments or who have stable office addresses can also request items this way. This service will be rolling out later in the month.

The Libraries are excited to offer this expanded level of access to materials in support of the research and instruction missions of the University. If you have questions or comments, please contact Jill Palmer, Manager, Access Services (palmer@wsu.edu).

New Sage Reference Books Online!

scales@wsu.edu (Jane Scales) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:22:35 GMT

Try out our new Sage reference sources! These titles will be especially helpful for anyone working on projects related to human development, sociology, and the social sciences in general.

Here are just a few of the titles now available.

21st Century Sociology : a Reference Handbook
Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media
Encyclopedia of Career Development
The Sage Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods
Encyclopedia of Social Theory

For a complete list of the new online titles, click here or search Griffin, limiting by E-Resources - All, and searching as keyword: "sage reference".

Why enroll in GenEd 300, "Accessing Information for Research?"

scales@wsu.edu (Jane Scales) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:23:32 GMT

Students,

Please consider now enrolling in General Education 300, a 1-credit course, on accessing and using information for research. You will learn about the many academic databases offered by the WSU Libraries which can make your life a lot easier.

Starting in Fall of 2009, the course will also address how to find course readings when you are only given a citation. We will also look at Zotero, a free bibliographic software program you can use to organize information and generate correctly-formatted bibliographies.

SNL number is: 64147

Questions? Email scales@wsu.edu

- Jane Scales

Course Readings and Full Text Articles

scales@wsu.edu (Jane Scales) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:01:30 GMT

DDP Students -

Beginning in the Summer of 2009, you will find fewer direct links from your coursespace to assigned reading articles. Increaslingly, you will be given an article citation and will be given the responsibility for finding the full text article yourself via the WSU Library databases.

We will be working on several tutorials to show you how to find these articles.

Survey - Interested in Live Online Help from the Libraries?

scales@wsu.edu (Jane Scales) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:00:07 GMT

DDP students -

The WSU Libraries would like to measure your interest in a new service we are developing - live online web conferencing sessions. These live sessions would enable you to interact with a librarian, see demonstrations of searches on your computer, and get immediate feedback on your questions.

Click Here to take survey

As well as providing general research help, we are developing a list of topics that could be covered in 20-minute sessions. Here are a few examples.

Possible Future Online Sessions:

Understanding Scholarly Articles

Are you puzzled when your professor requires you to use scholarly journal articles? Learn strategies on reading and understanding journal articles. We will look at how journal articles are organized, and practical methods you can use to glean the information you need from them.

Exercises for narrowing a topic

So you are interested in child development, environmentalism, or violence in the media. How do you turn a broad topic into something manageable? This online session will give you strategies to do just that. We will examine methods of focusing topics, and developing your skills to recognize when you have a focused academic topic.

Using Griffin and SUMMIT

Do you know all the things you can do with Griffin? We will look at the ins and outs of searching for books, media items, and government documents with Griffin. Other features of Griffin this session will cover are Your Record, and using SUMMIT to supplement your research.

Bibliographic Styles

MLA, APA, Chicago??? Not sure how to use bibliographic styles? In this session, we will review some good resources to help you get your bibliography and research paper in order. Bring questions and examples you want to work with to the session.

Click Here to take survey

DDLS page highlights research tutorials

scales@wsu.edu (Jane Scales) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:45:53 GMT

The DDLS web site: http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/ddls/ now highlights in easy-to-use fashion some of the most important instructional tutorials to help you with your research.
Most of these tutorials, which include the WSU Libraries Online Tour for DDP Students. You will also find many animated tutorials which demonstrate how to find articles, and use other library services and features.

In addition, you will find information about the bibliographic software, Zotero. Zotero is an add-on to the Firefox web browser. It can help you capture information (citations, links, and abstracts) from any of the Libraries' databases as well as from the web. Keep your research organized this semester with Zotero!!

Updates to Summit Catalog

scales@wsu.edu (Jane Scales) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:33:45 GMT

WSU Libraries, in cooperation with the 35 other WA/OR academic libraries of the Orbis Cascade Alliance, launched a new version of the Summit Catalog on December 1, 2008. New features include:

The addition of the 110 million book/media records from OCLCs WorldCat to those discoverable through Summit.
Access to about 50 million articles from OCLC databases such as ArticleFirst, British Library Serials, PubMed, and ERIC, through Summit.
An improved user interface with spelling assistance; book covers; post-search filters such as author, format, date, audience, language and topic; improved relevance ranking, syndication/tagging with online services like Google, Amazon and Facebook; citation creation tools and book reviews.

You can learn more about the new version of Summit at: http://orbiscascade.org/index/communication-kit

Enroll in GenEd 300 now

scales@wsu.edu (Jane Scales) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:12:30 GMT

Enroll now in the 1-credit GenEd 300, "Accessing Information for Research." This course is specifically tailored for the DDP students, and has recently been revised and improved.
You will learn how to formulate an academic research topic, search professional databases, and better understand how scholarly resources can be read and understood.

Questions about the class can be sent to scales@wsu.edu.

ProQuest to EBSCO Databases Transition (IMPORTANT!)

scales@wsu.edu (Jane Scales) — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:58:17 GMT

Database Transition

Starting June 1, there will be significant change to the the WSU Libraries' database packages. For a full, detailed explanation of this change, you may wish to consult this web page.

Briefly, here is the rundown of how these changes will affect how DDP students access journal, newspaper, and business resources:

List of Database Changes

You used to use ....
ABI Inform
ProQuest Direct
ProQuest Newspapers

Now use ....
Business Source Complete
Academic Search Complete
Newsbank Access World News

Remember, though ProQuest Direct will continue to carry some newspapers (including Historical New York Times 1851 - current), you will not be able to access scholarly journal article through ProQuest anymore.