Library Hacks » Original research http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks Tips & tools to save you time Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:45:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Congrats to the winners of the Middlesworth Award & Durden Prize http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2010/10/22/congrats-to-the-winners-of-the-durden-prize-middlesworth-award/ http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2010/10/22/congrats-to-the-winners-of-the-durden-prize-middlesworth-award/#comments Fri, 22 Oct 2010 18:54:53 +0000 Emily Daly http://library.duke.edu/blogs/libraryhacks/?p=9181 Parents’ and Family Weekend brings with it special events and festivities held across campus, and Duke University Libraries are not excluded from the excitement. As part of our roster of activities, we will honor the recipients of the Middlesworth Award and Durden Prize for their exceptional use of the Libraries’ special [...]]]> Parents’ and Family Weekend brings with it special events and festivities held across campus, and Duke University Libraries are not excluded from the excitement. As part of our roster of activities, we will honor the recipients of the Middlesworth Award and Durden Prize for their exceptional use of the Libraries’ special and general collections.

Our heartfelt congratulations to the 2010 winners of the Middlesworth Award for their outstanding research using materials from the Rare Book, Special Collections and Manuscript Library:

Undergraduate Award: Adrienne R. Niederriter
“Speak Softly and Carry a Lipstick: Government Influence on Female Sexuality through Cosmetics During World War II”
Nominated by Sarah Hallenbeck

Undergraduate Award: Hannah C. Craddock
“‘New Self-Respect and a New Consciousness of Power:’ White Nurses, Black Soldiers, and the Danger of World War I”
Nominated by Malachi Hacohen and Adriane Lentz-Smith

Graduate Award: Bonnie E. Scott
“Demonstrations in the House of God: Methodist Preaching and the Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina, 1960-1969”
Nominated by Laceye Warner and Kenneth Carder

And our congrats to the 2010 recipients of the Durden Prize for their use of resources from and services related to the Duke University Libraries’ general collections:

First/Second Year Award: Julia Sun
“The Myth of the Addict: Opium Suppression in Late Imperial China”
Supported by Vasant Kaiwar

Third/Fourth Year Award: Ryan Brown
“The Native of Nowhere: Nat Nakasa”
Supported by Karin Shapiro
and
Eugenia Cho
“Architectural Acoustics of Symphony Hall”
Supported by Dewey Lawson

Honors Thesis Award: Andrew Simon
“Intertwining Narratives: The Copts and their Muslim Relations”
Supported by miriam cooke

I would also like to recognize this year’s finalists for the Durden Prize: Lindsay Emery, Rose Filler, Caroline Griswold, Brad Lightcap, Brianna Nofil and Eugene Wang.

We will be celebrating the achievements of our winners at an awards reception on Friday, October 22 from 3:30-4:30 in the Rare Book Room. All are invited to join us for refreshments and the opportunity to honor the recipients of and applicants for the 2010 Middlesworth Award and Durden Prize.

]]> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2010/10/22/congrats-to-the-winners-of-the-durden-prize-middlesworth-award/feed/ 0 Power tool for working with data http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2010/09/03/power-tool-for-working-with-data/ http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2010/09/03/power-tool-for-working-with-data/#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:40:12 +0000 Michael Peper http://library.duke.edu/blogs/libraryhacks/?p=8771 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 [...]]]> 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 videos that more fully explain and demonstrate some of the functionality of this tool.

Short List of Gridworks Functions

  • Bring similar data together for normalization (CIT and C.I.T. or just plain old data entry errors)
  • Create facets based on any column of data
  • Make graphs of any two columns to quickly visualize relationships
  • Pull data from the Freebase database to add to your own data
  • Make external data sets more useful by creating linking

This is just a brief list, but visit the site for more detail and see how Gridworks could save you time in data cleanup or help to create visualizations you couldn’t before.

]]> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2010/09/03/power-tool-for-working-with-data/feed/ 1 What *really* matters when citing sources? http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/11/05/what-really-matters-when-citing-sources/ http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/11/05/what-really-matters-when-citing-sources/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:12:44 +0000 Emily Daly http://library.duke.edu/blogs/libraryhacks/?p=5021 You may know that two major style manuals — APA and MLA — have released new editions in the last six or so months. And if you’re aware of that fact, you undoubtedly know that both editions contain inconsistencies in their examples and enough errors to require APA to post an 8-page [...]]]> You may know that two major style manuals — APA and MLA — have released new editions in the last six or so months. And if you’re aware of that fact, you undoubtedly know that both editions contain inconsistencies in their examples and enough errors to require APA to post an 8-page list of corrections and then replace its first run copies with a second printing.

The new rules have driven confused and frustrated researchers to sources such as APA’s blog, which provides examples and attempts to explain the more complicated rules (check out the DOI/URL flowchart — yes, this rule requires a flowchart), or Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL), which hosts APA and MLA resources that received 3.5 million and 2.5 million hits, respectively, during September and October alone, according to the coordinator of OWL.

It is evident from these stats alone that librarians and faculty have spent countless hours supporting the researchers and students who have spent even more time formatting manuscripts to meet the unbending rules of CSE, APA, MLA and enumerable others.

As Barbara Fister posits in her ACRLog post, is this time well spent? Is research somehow made more valid when its footnotes are perfectly formatted, its works cited page spaced just so? Have we spent so much time agonizing over comma placement and tracking down database names that we’ve lost sight of the whole point of citing sources in the first place? Do our budding scholars realize that citing sources is not merely an academic hazing ritual of sorts, causing them hours of extra labor after their papers are written?

It would seem that the newest editions of APA and MLA are only muddying the waters, making it harder for researchers — especially novice ones — to achieve the true goal of citing sources: to give credit to the scholars their research builds upon and to make it as easy as possible for their readers to learn more about that work.

And if we can agree on that primary goal, how do we get back to emphasizing it rather than the arcane rules?

]]> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/11/05/what-really-matters-when-citing-sources/feed/ 2 Facebook for Faculty (Part Two) http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/06/30/facebook-for-faculty-part-two/ http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/06/30/facebook-for-faculty-part-two/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:00:39 +0000 libraryhacks http://library.duke.edu/blogs/libraryhacks/?p=2931

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 [...]]]>

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 unique identifier to ensure that your work is correctly attributed to you
  • Provide a way for your institution to properly measure your performance
  • Manage your publication list and professional profile online, in one place
  • List previous institutions in your profile to helps others find you as you move through your career

Learn More…

Written by Nathaniel King

]]> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/06/30/facebook-for-faculty-part-two/feed/ 0 Publish or Perish http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/05/22/publish-or-perish/ http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/05/22/publish-or-perish/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 17:59:34 +0000 Michael Peper http://library.duke.edu/blogs/libraryhacks/?p=2781 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 [...]]]> 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 specific researcher or publication.  Some of these are GoogleScholar (don’t forget to set your preferences!), Scopus, SciFinder Scholar, and MathSciNet among many others.

Joining this group is Publish or Perish, with a slightly different take on this process.  Publish or Perish uses data from Google Scholar, but it automatically does analysis on the citation patterns for specific authors.  After searching for an author (works best with first initial and quotes, such as “DG Schaeffer”) you can select the papers you want to analyze and you get metrics such as total citations, cites per year, h-index, g-index, etc.  Any analysis done can be exported to EndNote, BibTeX or a CSV file.

The software is available for Windows and Linux and is a quick, light, free download from the Publish or Perish website.  It’s more of a do-one-thing-well software and isn’t full of features, but this makes it easy to use.  It was created by an Australian professor and she includes some thoughts on her site about GoogleScholar as a citation tool as well as an explanation of the metrics used in the software.

]]> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/05/22/publish-or-perish/feed/ 2 Want $1000? http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/04/22/want-1000-2/ http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/04/22/want-1000-2/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:22:42 +0000 Emily Daly http://library.duke.edu/blogs/libraryhacks/?p=2711

Then enter your research paper or project into competition for the Libraries’ Durden Prize or Middlesworth Award.

Undergraduates who make exceptional use of library collections (yep, articles that you get online through the Libraries website count!) are eligible for the Durden Prize.

Undergraduates OR graduate students who incorporate materials [...]]]> Want $1000?

Then enter your research paper or project into competition for the Libraries’ Durden Prize or Middlesworth Award.

Undergraduates who make exceptional use of library collections (yep, articles that you get online through the Libraries website count!) are eligible for the Durden Prize.

Undergraduates OR graduate students who incorporate materials from the Rare Books, Manuscript and Special Collections Library into their research are invited to submit papers for consideration for the Middlesworth Award.

All winners will be recognized at a reception at Parents and Family Weekend 2009 and will receive $1000.

Submissions for both awards are due to the library by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, May 15.

Note: Both awards require a faculty member’s signature, and the Durden Prize requires a short essay on your research process, so you may not want to wait till May 15 to decide to apply!

]]> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2009/04/22/want-1000-2/feed/ 2 Want $1000? http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2008/04/04/want-1000/ http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2008/04/04/want-1000/#comments Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:20:16 +0000 Emily Daly http://library.duke.edu/blogs/libraryhacks/2008/04/04/want-1000/

Then enter your research paper or project into competition for the Libraries’ Durden Prize or Middlesworth Award.

Undergraduates who make exceptional use of library collections (databases count and e-journals count!) are eligible for the Durden Prize.

Undergraduates OR graduate students who incorporate materials from the Rare Books, Manuscript [...]]]> Want $1000?

Then enter your research paper or project into competition for the Libraries’ Durden Prize or Middlesworth Award.

Undergraduates who make exceptional use of library collections (databases count and e-journals count!) are eligible for the Durden Prize.

Undergraduates OR graduate students who incorporate materials from the Rare Books, Manuscript and Special Collections Library are invited to submit papers for consideration for the Middlesworth Award.

All winners will be recognized at a reception at Parents and Family Weekend 2008 and will receive $1000.

Submissions for both awards are due to the library by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 15.

Note: Both awards require a faculty member’s signature, and the Durden Prize requires a short essay on your research process, so you may not want to wait till May 15 to decide to apply!

]]> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2008/04/04/want-1000/feed/ 1 Duke Library Website Under Creative Commons License http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2007/12/14/duke-library-website-under-creative-commons-license/ http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2007/12/14/duke-library-website-under-creative-commons-license/#comments Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:16:36 +0000 libraryhacks http://library.duke.edu/blogs/libraryhacks/2007/12/14/duke-library-website-under-creative-commons-license/ 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 [...]]]> 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 pages are not licensed, because of various copyright or other legal issues; they will explicitly say so.

creative.jpg

The conditions for use are: you give credit to the Duke Libraries for the used material, you don’t use our material to make money, and whatever you make from our material must also be available for sharing and remixing.

Do you have a web site that you host or contribute to? Consider Creative Commons licensing for your site.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

]]> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2007/12/14/duke-library-website-under-creative-commons-license/feed/ 2 IRB approval for research using interviews http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2007/07/17/irb-approval/ http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2007/07/17/irb-approval/#comments Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:06:00 +0000 Catherine Shreve http://library.duke.edu/blogs/libraryhacks/2007/07/17/irb-approval/ Sarah Wallace has some interesting comments on the process of getting IRB approval for using (interviewing) human subjects for her Ukraine project. Here’s an excerpt:

All week, I’ve been working hard on my application for Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval of my project in Ukraine. …Procedures for protecting the rights and welfare of human [...]]]> Sarah Wallace has some interesting comments on the process of getting IRB approval for using (interviewing) human subjects for her Ukraine project. Here’s an excerpt:

All week, I’ve been working hard on my application for Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval of my project in Ukraine. …Procedures for protecting the rights and welfare of human subjects are the same, no matter who conducts the research; thus, student researchers like myself are held to the same standards as faculty researchers. If an undergraduate at Duke wants to conduct research that involves human subjects in any capacity, he or she must fill out a long, complicated application and send it to the Duke IRB before beginning the study.
..there is a chance that I won’t gain approval until after I arrive in Ukraine. …
Although the form took a lot of time and effort to complete, I’m very glad I did it. It really made me think through my research approach at a level of detail that I hadn’t before.

 

See her full post here, or check out her Notes from YkpaïHa feed on the right.

And here’s her update:

The Duke IRB liked my protocol a lot. Flattery aside, however, they had “a number” (read – “a million”) suggestions for ways to improve my consent forms and other documents.

..[I must] also prepare a separate consent protocol for the interviewees that are Ark workers/ICARR participants. As the IRB pointed out to me, these people shoulder the most risk by talking to me, so I must take extra precaution to ensure that their interviews are kept confidential.

]]> http://blogs.library.duke.edu/libraryhacks/2007/07/17/irb-approval/feed/ 2