This post is brought to you by Alerts! – a special section of Library Hacks. As they are released, you can look forward to new database announcements, updates, and (rare) outage notices. Stay tuned!
Ab Imperio Quarterly
“Ab Imperio Quarterly is an international humanities and social sciences peer-reviewed journal dedicated to studies in new imperial [...]
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“I read an article about that a while ago. No – wait. I cited it in a paper… What was the title again? The author’s name started with a J, I think.”
Perkins-Bostock Library offers a series of workshops for Zotero, RefWorks and EndNote. If you’d like to sign up, please do so here. [...]
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This post is brought to you by Alerts! – a special section of Library Hacks. Weekly, you can look forward to new database announcements, updates, and (rare) outage notices. Stay tuned!
- Audiobooks from Recorded Books Incorporated via NC Live
Duke Libraries will be offering a great selection of downloadable audiobooks later this month, according [...]
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Here is a great way to use the QuickSearch tab found on the front page of Duke Libraries webpage. Because searches in that tab search a lot – journal databases, the catalog (books), and more, it is a great place to start. In particular, it is a great way to follow up [...]
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This in just yesterday from Zotero’s blog: “A new third-party plugin called Zotpress is now available. It runs on WordPress, the open source platform widely used for personal, professional and course websites and blogs. Zotpress was created by community member Katie Seaborn, and it allows you [...]
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This post is brought to you by Alerts! – a special section of Library Hacks. Weekly, you can look forward to new database announcements, updates, and (rare) outage notices. Stay tuned!
Database Upgrade -
On Wednesday, 1 June 2011, IEEE will implement an upgrade to the IEEE Xplore digital [...]
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New Articles Tab Tip
When you return from Spring Break, the articles search from the library homepage will look a little different. There will be no changes to the look of the homepage or the Articles tab, but your search results will reveal an improved system for finding articles.
The big improvements will be speed [...]
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Are you thinking about going on in school? Do you want to get some practice in before taking your GRE, MCAT, GMAT, or LSAT? Well the library can help! We have a database called Learning Express Library that can help. Once you get into the database, create a free account so that you can [...]
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To honor the 50th anniversary, we would like to showcase four Returned Peace Corps Volunteers currently working in the Perkins Library:
Michael Peper, Librarian for Math and Physics
Benin
Education (TEFL)
2003-2005
Kimberley Burhop-Service, Manager, Library Human Resources
Gabon
Education
1993-1995
Jean Ferguson, [...]
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Are you an EndNote or RefWorks user? Many people on Duke’s campus are. There is an open source alternative, however that you might want to check out. Starting out as a Firefox browser plug-in, Zotero let users capture any bibliographic information they came across while on the internet. With a click, you could capture and [...]
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Resources Currently Open for Testing by Duke University Affiliates
Go to: Database Trials
20th Century African American Poetry:
A database of modern and contemporary African American poetry, featuring almost 9,000 poems by 62 of the most important African American poets of the last century, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Imamu Amiri [...]
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There exist several complimentary routes to getting your textbooks. Obviously, purchasing them at the bookstore is the easiest way – if you have more money than time. For those who have more time than money, there are other places to check first, so get started early. (For a little background on why textbooks are so [...]
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The Library of the African Studies Centre Leiden has compiled a web dossier on Southern Sudan to coincide with the 9 January 2011 referendum.
In the referendum, southern Sudanese throughout the country will vote on whether to remain part of Sudan or secede and become a separate country. The referendum marks the end of the [...]
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The annual Commemorative Service for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will take place Sunday, January 16th at 3:00 pm in the Duke University Chapel. This year’s theme, Connect to the Dream, reflects a desire for today’s youth to stay connected with, or reconnect to, Dr. King’s values and vision for [...]
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Sourced from The National Archives, Kew – the UK government’s official archive, Foreign Office Files for China, 1949-1980 provides primary source materials in English language for researchers at all levels.
Published in three sections covering the periods 1949-1956; 1957-1966; and 1967-1980; this database addresses a crucial period in Chinese history, from the foundation of the [...]
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Beginning January 1, 2011, JSTOR will provide access to the current issues of 174 journals from 19 different publishers.
Here are a few things that you need to know about the new Current Scholarship Program (CSP):
• Current issues will be seamlessly integrated with back issue content for institutional and individual subscribers to the titles.
[...]
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Perkins Reference Desk Hours – Fall Reading and Exam Period
December 13, 2010 – December 19, 2010
Monday – Thursday 9:00 am -2:00 am
Friday 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Saturday 1:00 pm -5:00 pm
Sunday 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
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Library Hacks has blogged about Zotero before, and it continues to develop into an interesting and useful citation management tool. Unlike EndNote or RefWorks (both of which are freely available to Duke users under a campus site license), Zotero is an open source application, freely available to [...]
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Google Scholar is a search engine that allows users to search for scholarly materials on a topic. Instead of searching the entire web (like Google), Google Scholar searches the scholarly literature provided by numerous academic publishers, professional societies, universities and scholarly organizations.
Search results include citations from peer-reviewed journals, theses, papers, books and technical reports.
[...]
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The Professional Affairs Committee of Librarians Assembly invites you to join Haiti Lab Co-directors Laurent Dubois and Deborah Jenson, Franklin Humanities Institute Director Ian Baucom and Librarians Holly Ackerman and Heidi Madden for a brownbag discussion of the Haiti Lab and the potential for involvement of Duke Libraries staff in future humanities labs.
When: Friday, [...]
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Reduce connection charges while flying..most major carriers charge between $5.00 to $13.00 for internet service. Gogo Inflight (gogoinflight.com) offers six-packs and 24 our flight passes that may cut your charges by as much as 30%. An alternative to online charges is to check out our E-readers, go to library.duke.edu/ereaders for more details.
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To highlight the generosity of donors, the Collection Development Gifts Unit is now adding electronic gift plates to records for new gifts in kind.
Searchable in the catalog, the text can be found on the details tab.
The default text on the book plates is” Gift of [Professor Kindheart]” but other text options are available.
[...]
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AllAfrica.com-Africa News Online is a comprehensive resource featuring stories from newspapers, magazines, and news agencies. The news service posts more than 1000 stories daily in English and French and also provides access to the Africa News Service Archives, a resource of more than 900,000 articles on Africa dating back to 1997.
For pre-1997 materials, look [...]
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Jakob Nielsen , a renowned Danish researcher in the field of web design for user satisfaction, compared the speed of reading (Lesegeschwindigkeit) in print, on the Kindle and on the iPad in his latest research
His conclusion is:” The iPad measured at 6.2% lower reading speed than the printed book, whereas the [...]
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As a Durham native, I know there are lots of interesting places where you can eat or relax after a busy week at work. Here are just a few blogs worth checking out, if you are looking for ideas:
Carpe Durham: Ramblings about food by people whose only qualification is eating a lot
If you deal with large amounts of data and especially if you use spreadsheets to work with it, there is a new tool for you. Freebase Gridworks allows you to upload data and then examine, filter and do data cleanup for ‘grid-shaped data.’ Visit the Gridworks project site for more information and [...]
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patsnap, developed at MIT, provides free U.S. and international patent searching with analytic services.
http://www.patsnap.com/
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Computer users often have ways to backup their computer files but, if you use a number of cloud-based services, you should also think about developing a strategy for backing up your cloud data.
Hopefully, you won’t need the backup but we all know that problems with data storage can cause headaches: servers [...]
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From the website: “The annual Horizon Report is a collaborative effort between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). Each year, the report identifies and describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within three adoption horizons: a [...]
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The Library of Congress announced that it has acquired and will archive every public tweet since Twitter’s service started in 2006. That’s more than 50 million tweets per day. Twitter declared, “[it is] very exciting that tweets are becoming part of history.”
Notable tweets include:
Obama’s tweet when he won the 2008 election: http://tiny.cc/srs68 [...]
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National index to Chinese newspapers and periodicals, 1833-1949 全国报刊索引 is an index database is from Shanghai library and covers about 18,000 Chinese newspapers and periodicals published 1833-1949. There are approximately 400,000 entries in NICNP (1833-1910) and [...]
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Members of the Duke community who are engaged in research relating to the campus infrastructure can now download GIS Layers of the Duke campus and surrounding areas. These are in formats compatible with ArcGIS software, and some (the shapefiles) are importable into Google Earth Pro.
[...]
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A while ago, Library Hacks blogged about Zotero, an open source research organizer/citation management system developed at George Mason University. One of their tag lines is “Good bye 3×5 cards, hello Zotero.” (Yes, we know that many of you don’t even remember taking notes and saving references on 3×5 cards…).
A lot has [...]
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Earlier, we told you about the many ways to get audiobooks through Duke and on the web.
There is now a new way to download audiobooks straight from the web. NC Live is now providing 750 downloadable audiobooks that are available in .mp3 format so you can burn them to a [...]
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Courtesy of the CIT blog, here is an article from the Duke Chronicle on the future of the Apple iPad at Duke University and its libraries:
http://dukechronicle.com/article/duke-taps-ipad-fall-2010
Written by Zeke Graves
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Screencasting technology allows you to record what is happening on your computer screen with accompanying audio commentary and then share it with others. It enables remote collaboration and learning and provides an effective medium for educating users in the best use of databases and online resources.
It is a handy and useful tool for students, [...]
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Need new research material? No matter what it is — book, DVD, CD, database, etc. — our library offers services to obtain it.
You May:
Suggest a purchase:
http://library.duke.edu/services/forms/suggestpurchase.html
Request it through ILL:
Be sure to Search TRLN first in case the book is closer than you think.
Loans from libraries [...]
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During the month of January, Reference librarians at Perkins Library answered a total of 1,795 questions, excluding questions sent in by chat.
Here is a sampling of the questions asked last month -
* Need help tracking down the volume in which a 1883 botanical illustration appeared?
* game theoretic applications to executive compensation?
* [...]
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Quiet study spots
Looking for a quiet place to study in Perkins/Bostock? No need to limit yourself to the designated quiet rooms in Bostock – the International and Area Studies Reading Room on the 2nd floor and the Carpenter Reading Room on the 3rd floor. Check out some of the lesser known places.
Group [...]
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Real-time search tools let you search not only the Web but also Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and similar services — which can prove especially helpful when events such as the Haiti earthquake happen.
>>> Here’s a look at five tools for effective real-time search.
http://www.cio.com/article/521064/Real_Time_Search_5_Alternatives_to_Google_Bing
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Duke users now have access to the sociology research database SocINDEX with Full Text. This new subscription provides comprehensive coverage of sociology resources, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study.
SocINDEX with Full Text features more than 2,066,400 records; extensive indexing for books/monographs, conference papers, and other non-periodical sources; abstracts for [...]
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We previously discussed the growing number of sources for getting lecture videos in the post Free Video Lectures. These are great ways to provide an alternative for the classroom experience. But what about using video as an alternative to traditional scholarly communication or publishing through journals, books, etc? Here are a few sites [...]
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http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-Prepare-Your-College/49455/
Written by Elizabeth Dunn
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Before finals Information Technology Services (ITS) polled patrons at the Perkins Reference desk to see which netbook they preferred the Lenovo s12 or the slightly smaller Lenovo s10e. 9 of 10 surveyed said they preferred the slightly larger s12 over the s10e because the larger keyboard was easier to use and the 10 inch [...]
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Previous posts have focused mainly on text- and image-based resources. This installment will highlight audio, specifically free resources available on the Internet. Here are a few:
The British Library’s public collections include field recordings of natural and urban soundscapes, music from around the world, a survey of English dialects, early spoken word [...]
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Ready to start that term paper? Not sure how to start? The University of Minnesota Libraries have created an assignment calculator to help students organize their time to meet their research needs. Start with today’s date, enter the date assignment is due, a timeline is provided, with research milestones. Use Duke Library [...]
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Global Access and Local Action- Health Information and Open Access
Friday October 23rd , 1-3pm
217 Perkins Library.
In an era of globalization, issues of connectivity and access to information concerning health care and health related systems remain uneven across the world. Duke students and faculty from Trinity College and the Duke Global [...]
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For people who are interested in colonial Taiwan(1895-1945), there’s some good news. Libraries inside and outside Taiwan are digitizing their special collections including photographs and art images and make them free available to interested researchers and general public. The following are four selected collections:
Three photpgraph collections from Lafayette college’s digital collection. All the photos [...]
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We’ve been getting more and more questions in the library about how researchers can find information from other disciplines. For example, how can someone working on membranes in Psychiatry connect up with someone working on membranes in Materials Science? In a world where waiting for the published article is increasingly too [...]
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Now that classes are definitely back in full swing, we wanted to share some help with some of those consistently vexing issues for students. Refer to previous posts for some information on data backup, free video lectures, and electronic sticky notes.
Finding textbooks – Most know [...]
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There are iPhone apps for just about anything. They’ve got you covered if you need to get Danish handball scores, calculate alimony, keep track of your pet’s vet records, or create and test palindromes. There is more than just fun in the world of apps, though. Here are some great research tools for mobile devices.
[...]
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Do you find yourself waiting longingly for the next post of Library Hacks? Is there just nothing that will satisfy your thirst for research, technology and library related news?? If so, LibWorm is the tool for you! LibWorm, a search engine that searches over 1500 library related or librarian maintained blogs, can help [...]
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Sticky notes are great for jotting down quick thoughts to act on later. On the negative side, they have serious shortcomings when it comes to organizing all these ideas and sharing them with others. Here are a few web tools which expand the utility of sticky notes and bring them to your electronic environment.
[...]
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Name ambiguity is a recurring issue that impacts research accuracy and quality, career advancement and tenure, global collaboration among researchers, and identification and attribution of funding for institutions and individual authors alike.
ResearcherID.com by Thomson Reuters (the creators of ISI’s Journal Citation Reports) allows researchers to:
Generate a [...]
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2collab is a collaboration platform designed specifically for researchers in the science, technical and medical communities.
Produced by Elsevier and intended for use by professional researchers in academic, government and corporate institutions, 2collab provides a great solution for the following challenges:
1. I need [...]
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For many faculty and graduate students who remain on-campus, the summer is the time to catch up with all those things that got left behind in the end-of-semester rush.
With the deluge of articles and books in your field, it’s sometimes a challenge to keep up-to-date.
Not any more.
If you use [...]
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There are a number of ways to analyze the impact of publications of a particular researcher (including yourself). A longtime favorite has been ISI’s (Social) Science Citation Index, which has come to the web as Web of Science. The web has introduced a number of other tools for assessing the impact of a [...]
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Wouldn’t it be nice to have all your research (your papers, articles, etc.) in one place? Papers (for Mac, iPhone & iTouch) allows you to download, browse and organize all of your research from within its attractive and intuitive interface (2007 winner of Apple’s Design Award).
Papers allows [...]
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Even the best professors, books and classmates can be improved with some additional information. In this post we’re going to list a few places where you can find some great lectures to supplement what you’re getting in your own course.
The first is a series of lectures from Academic Earth. This [...]
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It’s the one little line in your assignment that can lead to hours of work:
Format your paper in APA (or MLA, or Chicago, or Turabian…)
Inserting correct citations and a properly formatted bibliography used to involve complicated manuals, memorization of arcane facts about space placement after a period, and a lot of [...]
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Imagine: You have to organize a group meeting with several people who have busy schedules.
Person A: I can’t meet on Wednesday, can you meet Thursday?
Person B: I can’t meet on Thursday, can you meet Friday?
Person C: Ughhhh…there has got to be a better way to organize meetings!
Got a pile of PDFs on your computer? Turn your research documents into your own personal digital library with Mendeley–a new tool for organizing and sharing research.
Mendeley has a downloadable (free!) desktop software component, as well as a web-based component (Mendeley Web). Mendeley Web allows you to sync your library of PDFs, [...]
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Are you all-a-twitter about Twitter? So are we!
If you have questions, you can go to the reference desk or IM, email and text librarians. But what if you just want some general updates on library happenings? What if you’re curious about some of the fascinating questions we [...]
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The library has provided quite a few ways to contact us with your questions including phone, email, IM, research consultations and the reference desk on the first floor of Perkins. Take a look at the Ask a Librarian page for more details.
Now you can ask questions just by texting us. Send us [...]
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Even if you like to read books, can be hard to find the time or get into the habit of reading for pleasure. This is especially difficult for those of us that do a lot of reading for work and school. When we find ourselves with free time, we often neglect reading for other [...]
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Want a good book for a long car ride? Like to listen to fiction while doing your laundry?
Check out these tips for finding free audiobooks on the web and in local libraries.
Audiobooks available in the library:
Audiobooks (on cd and cassette) in Lilly
These [...]
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If you do work on two or more computers, or work on teams, Dropbox might be a helpful tool for you. Working on multiple computers allows us to be productive more often, but it adds a layer of coordination. Do you keep emailing myself files or carry a USB drive back and forth? [...]
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LibX is a web browser extension (also known as a plug-in or add-on) that places a toolbar in your browser, visual “cues” in certain web pages that link to Duke Library resources related to the item you’re viewing, and new menu items in the right-click menu in your browser, getting you quick access to [...]
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We’ve probably all experienced the frustration of automated telephone systems. Your needs are never included on the menu. You feel like you have a quick question that could be solved in 30 seconds if you could just talk to a real person. Or that sinking feeling when you realize you’ve heard this menu before. [...]
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**This tool is not yet ready for public use, but it seems to offer a lot of promise, so we’re sharing it with you now.**
Adobe Systems, working with researchers at the University of Washington, has just debuted Zoetrope, a new tool which we hope can illuminate the past of the [...]
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To see a list showing how many computers are available at various Library locations around campus, point your cell phone’s browser to a new page on the Library’s mobile website: http://library.duke.edu/mobile/workstations.do
This is part of a beta site providing Library web content formatted specifically for cell phones and other handheld devices (iPod Touch, [...]
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Many of us use Google to search the web for personal research and library resources for scholarly publications. Sometimes, however, it’s not clear whether what we need will be on the web or in scholarly literature. I’d like to point out some nice search engines for specific types of information that combine the ease of [...]
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New to college and looking for advice about how to get started researching and writing all these papers? Want to give your students some extra help in learning how to navigate the research process in an academic environment? Are you just a sucker for charming Canadian accents?
The University of Prince Edward Island [...]
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Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No! It’s…it’s…a subject librarian!
I know that some of you think your professors have sent you out into the world of research and writing with no allies and no weapons. I’m here to tell you that you are [...]
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What is it?
A website optimized for use on handheld devices such as cellphones, iPods, and PDAs:
http://library.duke.edu/mobile
These are new web pages created specifically with the needs of mobile users in mind. This pilot project does not duplicate the main library web site — mobile device users can still access the content [...]
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Do you ever come across the following error message while doing research on the Internet?
————————————————————————————–
Not Found
The requested URL /was not found on this server.
————————————————————————————–
There may be a solution! The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine allows you to browse through 85 billion [...]
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Wish you had a photographic memory? Me too, but since that’s not an option, I use Evernote. Never heard of it? Let me fill you in.
In a nutshell: Evernote is an application that allows you to collect information as you encounter it. What do I mean?
[...]
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It’s so tempting to leave your books and laptop in your favorite study spot while you head to the bathroom or to The Perk for a refill. Unfortunately, it only takes seconds for that precious laptop — along with the months’ worth of work saved to its hard drive — to vanish.
In response to [...]
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Last week, Duke Libraries launched a brand new interface to its catalog. There’s a lot that you can do with the new catalog that you couldn’t do before, so get ready for many new tips and tricks here on Library Hacks.
This post will focus on using RSS (really simple syndication). RSS “feeds” free [...]
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In further Facebook takes over the universe (at least the parts not already claimed by Google) news, there’s a new application in Facebook called CiteMe. You enter the title of the book you want to cite, click go, and the app spits out a formatted citation in one of five styles (APA, Chicago, Harvard. [...]
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Some of you avid fans of RefWorks will be happy to hear that you may now access this online research management system FREE through Duke’s OIT.
For those of you who haven’t yet been wowed by RefWorks’ user-friendly interface and robust functionality (think Works Cited pages in seconds; in-text citations in a couple of [...]
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A lot of the technoscenti have become coverts to Twitter in the last six months. Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows you to post 140-character snippets (via text message, web or other media) and have them read at the site, fed into your Facebook status page, or delivered in a variety of [...]
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If you’re a user of the Duke LibX browser plugin for Firefox, you should soon be getting prompted by Firefox to update the plugin. If you want it right away, go to the Tools / Add-ons menu and click “Find Updates” in the Extensions tab.
The new version is 1.2.8, and includes a couple [...]
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In Ted’s recent comments on connotea, he said he enjoyed it, but found that connotea was not such a great citation manager; it doesn’t always gather the metadata needed. On the connotea site, it explains that it is “specially designed for scientists and clinicians,” so it gathers bibliographic data better for some sites than [...]
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Start your summer research with a bang by learning to use EndNote, a reference management tool that is sure to save you time and frustration. Duke faculty, students and staff may download EndNote to personal or work computers, free of charge.
Perkins Library is offering a free introductory EndNote session on Tuesday, May [...]
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This year’s annual Instructional Technology Showcase, on April 24 in the Bryan Center, features a number of presentations about using technology tools in teaching. Come hear about:
Duke Digital Initiative 2008-2009
Tips and Tricks for Incorporating Web 2.0 in Your Class
Duke’s New Teaching and Learning Spaces
Second Life in [...]
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We’ve heard of several faculty and library staff members who are converts to iGoogle, which is sort of a customizable universal home page. If you use iGoogle and the Duke Libraries, you should certainly add our Google Gadget, which lets you put the tabbed search box from the library home page right into [...]
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Jump start your research and writing by using EndNote, a reference management tool that is sure to save you time and frustration. Duke faculty, students and staff may download EndNote to personal or work computers, free of charge.
Perkins Library is offering four free EndNote sessions:
Wed, Apr 9 from 12:00 PM – [...]
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As the semester gets endy and the library gets FULL, remember we have a handy online system that allows you to see where there are unused computers in Perkins, Bostock, Vesic, Music, and Lilly.
Another school (Georgia Tech) set up a system like this, and a student cartoonist [...]
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Did you know that these local universities have cooperative agreements between their libraries ? Duke students, faculty and staff can use their Duke ID cards to check out books at UNC, NC State, or NCCU, and vice versa, for example.
Now TRLN (the Triangle Research Libraries Network) has launched a new [...]
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Hang out in Facebook a lot? Do you think you might want to search the Duke library catalog and other library databases directly from there some times? You can now using the Duke Libraries Facebook application.
To install it, go to http://apps.facebook.com/dukelibraries/ and follow the usual method [...]
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(Since my first post introducing the research tool Zotero, its development continues apace. Several new features have been added, and over 60 institutions, according to the Zotero blog, now recommend Zotero, including MIT and Rice University–both having published their own tutorials on using it.)
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We recently wrote about some all-encompassing online encyclopedias. But there are also some very useful encyclopedias on specific scholarly topics. Increasingly the standard print reference works in any given field are becoming available in keyword-searchable full text online. Here are some great ones:
Oxford Reference Online has excellent encyclopedias and [...]
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If you spend all your time in Facebook, branch out from Scrabulous and movie trivia quizzes to take a look at some applications related to the library and books.
So far we’ve found:
WorldCat, the closest thing there is to a universal library catalog (for US users, anyway), now [...]
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Innovate, Journal of Online Education, is hosting a webcast that looks like a good introduction to Zotero, the free online citation management system that Allen raved about here. It’s Thursday Jan. 10 at 2:00 pm EST. [edited to correct date: Thanks, Brandi!]
It looks like you have to register for the [...]
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A colleague in the library recently observed a student using a cell phone camera to make a quick “note” of the title page of a book, and the call number label. What a great idea! Very useful for people who are in a big hurry, but want to make sure they capture the full bibliographic [...]
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Most of the Duke Libraries’ web pages are now licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License. What that means in non-lawyer speak is that everyone is welcome to use, share or remix the pages so licensed, under certain conditions.
Look for the logo below the footer on every relevant page. A few [...]
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Last summer we posted the first version of the Duke Libraries LibX browser add-on. A new version is out now, with some fixes, updates, and new functionality. If you already have LibX, Firefox should have notified you that there was an update available (if not, in Firefox go to Tools -> Add-ons and [...]
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Interested in accessing your EndNote library even when you’re not in front of your personal computer? Take your research on the road by setting up an EndNote Web account, and enjoy the freedom to consult or add citations to your EndNote library from any computer with an internet connection.
EndNote Web is designed to [...]
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Have you ever noticed the link on Amazon.com’s book record pages called “Text Stats“? (it’s in the “Inside this Book” section – you have to scroll down a bit). Since Amazon has the full text of many books in electronic format, they can tally up some fun (and revealing) statistics about each book. Stuff [...]
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The Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive is a remarkable database that contains full-length digital videos of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. This resource that Duke Libraries just recently purchased contains over 50,000 video testimonies.
To get to this database, just click on the database tab on the Duke Library homepage and [...]
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As we at iPod – I mean, Duke – University know, podcasts have proliferated in the past 5 years. They aren’t just for fun, however – major radio news sources and government agencies are making podcasts available that can be used in research or academic presentations. Radio podcasts can provide in-depth interviews with politicians, medical [...]
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The United States Census Bureau now allows you to receive updates via RSS, with subscriptions available for web site changes, tip sheets, population estimates (PopClocks!) and even daily podcasts, among others.
Most useful for researchers may be the set of RSS feeds for news releases on a wide variety of topics, including Aging [...]
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One of the comments on the LibX toolbar post asked about ways we could customize that toolbar to allow searches of specific databases, like JStor.
There is a way to search a database right from your web browser toolbar, using a customized search plugin. Most browsers come with options for searching Google, Yahoo or [...]
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We’ve all been there. After working for hours, we hit the wrong key or forget to save a file opened from email, and before we know it, lose it all.
To save yourself the headache of these maddening situations, consider ways that you can prevent them from happening in the first place…
Before you make [...]
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Zotero describes itself as a Firefox extension that helps you “collect, manage, and cite your research sources.” Since I’m as technologically trail-weary as the next person, I’ll try to make clear what it is about Zotero that should rouse you out of bed and why I’ve been an enthusiastic user for the last [...]
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Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries is a large collection of international music with full-length audio streams. This database is brand new and was recently acquired by Duke Libraries. It covers voices from people all around the world. Listen to old time country music, blues, recordings from African tribes, Broadway hits and much more!
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If you use the Medical Center Library a lot, you’ll like this. The library has recently released a browser toolbar that lets you search the library catalog, PubMed, the Medical Center Library website and more right from your browser. It also includes links to frequently used resources and a quick way to get help [...]
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Google Book Search – a project that has Google working with major US and international libraries to digitize out-of-copyright (and many still-under-copyright) books and make them freely accessible on the internet (and keyword-searchable!) has been an exciting, and controversial, development for libraries. (More about Google Book Search).
One the one hand, if you [...]
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Library staff often learn as much from our patrons – i.e. you – as they teach. My husband, who is a PhD student in engineering at another local institution of higher learning, said to me, “Why don’t you do a post on your blog about DOIs?” I had never heard of a DOI. So I [...]
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We are happy to announce the publication of the Duke version of the LibX plug-in for Firefox web browsers. Duke LibX allows you to install a toolbar in your browser with a search box that connects directly to Duke’s library catalog, e-journals, databases, or library web pages, as well as Google Scholar. You can highlight [...]
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If you live your life on the net and in the library, check out these two blog posts, with descriptions and links of lots of tools that might make your life easier:
Hack Attack: 13 book hacks for the library crowd (from LifeHacker) Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students (from
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From our Duke researcher in Ukraine, Sarah Wallace:
“I recently discovered a great feature of Google called Google Alerts. The program allows you to closely monitor specific topics in the news without having to [...]
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A few weeks ago we wrote about Connotea, a “social bookmarking” tool for academics, and in the comments Duke Professor Gary Feng reminded us of CiteULike, a similar tool that is currently more widely used in the sciences. Around the same time, the spring issue of the UK journal
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We’re currently encouraging faculty and students to test Connotea (www.connotea.org, pronounced con-no-TAY-uh), an online tool that combines the ‘tagging’ features of services such as del.icio.us with an academic research focus.
Anyone can register at the site, create a username, and then begin building a library of resources—online articles, book reviews, web pages, anything [...]
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RefWorks is web-based bibliographic management software. Does that make sense? I didn’t think so. So here’s what it really is: an online program that allows you to upload, save, and format article and book citations. Like EndNote (which you can get for free through Duke), RefWorks also formats your bibliography for you.
Right now, [...]
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Well, I fell this morning. People at work have been succumbing piecemeal for some time, and then my online community discovered it, and I was finally a goner.
What the heck am I talking about? Librarything (librarything.com). It’s sort of like Facebook, for your books. Basically, you create an online library catalog of your [...]
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Wouldn’t it be cool if while you were looking at books in Amazon’s online store you could see whether Duke Libraries have the book? Well, you can. A tool called Book Burro (bookburro.org) does just this.
It only works with the Firefox browser, so if you’re using Internet Explorer or other browsers [...]
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