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 store bibliographic references from Amazon, Google Book or anywhere else. You could also organize your references in folders, search your folders and generate works cited pages.
Now Zotero has a stand alone option (in beta) that works with Google Chrome AND Safari. Granted, this makes Zotero have pretty much the same features as EndNote and RefWorks in that all three now have web based and desktop solutions for citation management.
What makes Zotero competitive? Try it and find out. Duke Libraries now offers some support for Zotero users, similar to the help you can get with RefWorks and EndNote, as well as upcoming instruction opportunities.
For more information on Zotero’s latest standalone option, click here. To find out more about Zotero support within the Duke community, contact librarian Ciara Healy at Perkins Library.
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 Baraka, Audre Lorde and Rita Dove 2011-02-28
African American Biographical Database:
The African American Biographical Database (AABD) brings together in one resource the biographies of thousands of African Americans, many not to be found in any other reference source. These biographical sketches have been carefully assembled from biographical dictionaries and other sources. This extraordinary collection contains extended narratives of African American … 2011-02-27
Black Abolitionist Papers:
This collection documents the efforts of African American activists in their international effort to abolish slavery in the United States. Covering the period 1830-1865, the 15,000-item collection records the full impact of African American efforts to oppose slavery by displaying the writings and publications of the activists themselves. 2011-02-28
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 expensive, check out the Government Accounting Office’s report on textbook price inflation.)
Tip: Have the textbook’s ISBN handy. Having this number will help you to know that you have found the exact book (and edition) you need for class. Textbook information – including the ISBNs, exact title, edition number etc.- can be found at the Duke book store and on their website.
This image courtesy of McGraw-Hill
PDQ
Google Book: Google Book is a specialized Google search for, well, books. Only books. Is your textbook available? Search by title. Almost no book in Google Book is available in full text, however, so pages are always missing to conform to US copyright laws. BUT there are often whole chapters to be found. Google Book also offers links to finding the book in a nearby library (WorldCat) and online sale outlets (Books-A-Million, Half.com and others).
Perkins Library : Might your professor have put a copy of the book on reserve? Though your access to the reserve copy is limited – it may be currently checked out by a classmate or restricted to in-library use only – a book on reserve is f-r-e-e! The book may also be sitting right on the shelf. Check the catalogue as well.
Blackboard: Perhaps your professor put the first chapter or two in your Blackboard course site. Professors are not obliged to do this, but some do and it will buy you more time, so double check.
Electrify: The electronic version of the textbook may be available at Perkins/Bostock to read on the computer or though an online store, especially if you have a Nook, iPad or Kindle. There is a special ebook search in our library catalogue, just under the main search field on the front page.
Pretty soon
Editions: Consider earlier or other editions of the textbook you need. Sometimes a new edition is created to include significant new material and findings. Sometimes a new edition is the same information rearranged and has added features like a CD-ROM or access to online materials. So, an older edition might suffice. So might a soft cover edition, instead of the hard back.
InterLibrary Loan : Using this service, you can request to borrow from another library. ILL is a popular option, however. Also, the lending period for these books is determined by the library that holds the title, not Duke. You may have quite a short loan period and if there is high demand, it is likely that the book has already been requested or will not be lent so that patrons at that library may have a chance to use it first.
International: Often the UK or Canadian publication or a printing meant to be sold in another country is the same as the US edition you need. These may be significantly cheaper to purchase, but consider shipping costs and timing when pursuing this option. Think Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.ca and remember to calculate the cost in US dollars to make sure it is a bargain.
Rental options: Compare prices at some of the popular rental sites found with a Google search for “textbook rental”. This is a great time to have your ISBN handy to make sure you have the exact book that you need. Keep in mind that there may be delays with this method and there are few guarantees if there is a problem, such as the wrong edition or pages missing.
Power to the people!
DIY: Consider organizing a book swap or a student-to-student sales site. Often you can sell for more and buy more cheaply when you make a deal person-to-person, compared to a bookstore. This is another good time to check that ISBN to make certain that the edition you purchase is the same one used next semester. With this option, as well, there may be little recourse if you receive a damaged book or find out too late that there is a newer edition in use. Caveat emptor.
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 six-year interim period under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), also known as the Naivasha Agreement, which was signed by the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in Nairobi in January 2005 to end the decades-long second Sudanese civil war.
The dossier contains titles of books, articles and online publications on civil war in Southern Sudan, the peace process, and the events leading up to the referendum.
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 a world together.
Randall Robinson is the author of An Unbroken Agonyand the national bestsellers The Debt, The Reckoning, and Defending the Spirit. He is founder and past president of TransAfrica and is known for his impassioned opposition to apartheid and for his advocacy on behalf of Haitian immigrants and Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Frequently featured in major print media, Robinson has also appeared on Charlie Rose, Today, Good Morning America, and the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour.
Duke’s MLK Program
Time: 3:00 p.m. Duke Chapel
Free and open to the public
Free Parking — Bryan Center Parking Garage
Looking for resource materials on Dr. King? Begin your research here.
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 People’s Republic, in 1949, to the death of Zhou Enlai and Mao, the arrest of the Gang of Four and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. This complete British Foreign Office Files deals with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in this period. These files are particularly important because Britain was one of the first countries to recognize Communist China and to maintain diplomatic relations with China and from 1950 onward. From their vantage point in Beijing British diplomats reported on the turbulent and confusing political, social, and economic developments.
The Foreign Office’s reporting on politics, industry, trade and cultural affairs include:
Eye-witness accounts and detailed reports on life in China, 1949-1976.
In depth analysis of the Communist Revolution and all the major figures.
Material on the Korean War, the Cold War, US relations and the Cultural Revolution.
Please note that files for 1980 have not been released under the 30 year rule in time to be included at this stage but will be added by the publisher as soon as possible.
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 all. Currently it works only as a Firefox plugin, but plans are in the works for Zotero Everywhere which will be browser-independent.
The Libraries are beginning to offer workshops (such as this one for English and Literature graduate students) and will continue to explore ways to support Zotero users. How can we best help you to explore research tools like this one? Give it a try and leave a comment to let you know your thoughts!
Some library users can find interesting lectures, useful software training sessions, and workshops on the use of statistical data from the events calendar page for the Social Science Research Institute or SSRI (some of these, in fact, are cross-listed on the library calendars or taught by library staff).
Many events at Duke can be found from the main Events@Duke calendar. Use the See all groups link in the left-hand column to get a listing of the many departments and groups at Duke that may sponsor workshops, lectures, and training sessions. At the top, you can select Day, Week, Month, or Year listings, and the RSS feed might be handy. Although it might be fruitful to spend time exploring the various Calendar Views and other options, please be aware that although the goal of this calendar is to be comprehensive not all campus events are submitted. You still may want to check individual calendars that interest you like the ones mentioned above or (for example) from Student Affairs, the Sanford School of Public Policy, the Nicholas School of the Environment, or the Fuqua School of Business.
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.
For the most part, Google Scholar provides citation-only results. The full-text of an article or book can be accessed by using the Get it @ Duke link.
If you are using Google Scholar off campus, you will need to set your ‘Scholar Preferences’ to Duke University Libraries.
Want to learn more about Google Scholar?
Go to: http://library.duke.edu/research/help/googlescholar/index.html
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, December 3 from 11:30 am-1 pm (moderated discussion will begin at noon)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Since nearly 100% of donors during a pilot offering have already agreed to have this note added, we expect this option to be well received. It will soon become the default, though donors will still have the choice of anonymity.
If you have further questions about donating books to Perkins Library, please contact staff in the Collection Development Gifts Unit, Cheryl Thomas or Ian Holljes.
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 no further than the Duke University Libraries. The Africa News Service was founded in 1973 by a trio of Duke graduates, Bertie Howard (’69), Tamela Hultman (’68), and Reed Kramer (’69). The Africa News Service resource files for 1960-1996 were donated to the library in 1997.
The finding aid for the archives is available at: http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/rbmscl/africa/inv/
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 Kindle measured at 10.7% slower than print.” The article links to more information on what we can expect from e-readers and tablet computers in the future; the future is bright indeed (no pun intended).
On a related note…don’t miss this interesting classroom experiment comparing textbooks on Kindle versus iPad: “The E-Textbook Experiment Turns A Page,” broadcast on NPR this evening. User satisfaction with the Kindle seems to be significantly lower than user satisfaction with the iPad: “The problem is that the Kindle is less interactive than a piece of paper…”
Use the comment section to share your experience with various devices.
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
Endangered Durham: Land use, architecture, history, and sustainable development
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.
Open Access to Knowledge: The African Journal of Information and Communication
The African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC) is an academic journal, accredited by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training. Formerly the South(ern) African Journal of Information and Communication, the AJIC is an annual interdisciplinary journal concerned with Africa’s participation in the “information society” and network economy. It is both a rigorous academic journal and a practical tool to inform the continent’s ICT actors and decision-makers in government, industry and civil society. In the spirit of open access to knowledge and scholarship, AJIC is now published online. For additional information: http://link.wits.ac.za/journal/journal.html#iss
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 and internet access can go down and internet companies can have policies that change your access to your files.
Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, recently wrote, “I woke up this morning in Montreal to find that my access to my Google accounts has been temporarily disabled due to a ‘perceived violation of either the Google Terms of Service or product-specific Terms of Service.'” So, if you rely on such services as Gmail, Google Docs, and Flickr, you should think about a backup plan.
PC Magazine has a good article, “Back Up or Else” that discusses different methods and strategies you can use to back up your cloud. They also give “best practices” to get you started. Here are a few suggestions taken from Natalie Houston, “How to Back Up Your Cloud“:
Backup Your Photos
If you use Flickr to archive or display your photos, you may already have your photos backed up on your hard drive. But, if you upload photos directly from your computer or camera to Flickr, you may want to check out FlickrEdit, an open source program that allows you to download, backup, or upload your photos to and from Flickr.
Backup Your Gmail
The mail program Thunderbird is a simple and free way to backup your Gmail. Thunderbird is a mail program that collects and stores copies of your Gmail messages. Messages are stored in a simple text file so they are easy to access.
Backup Your Google Docs GDocBackup, a free and open source utility, can be used to backup all your Google Documents to a local disk. It backs up those documents not found on your hard drive or with a different date.
Other Ways to Backup Your Cloud?
If you know other tools to use to backup cloud data, please post them as comments. I’m sure others would like to hear your suggestions. Thanks!
It can be like looking for a needle in a haystack to find information from the US federal government. Most of this information is now online, but this hasn’t made the task any easier. Here are just a few of the ways of searching for government information (documents or data) when you don’t know where to go.
The Government Printing Office (GPO) has for many years provided access to authoritative versions of major government publications through their GPO Access web site. The information on GPO Access is in the process of being migrated to GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys). The migration is occurring on a collection-by-collection basis. The information on GPO Access will remain current and continue to be available until migration is complete. Using the “browse” feature to scan though available collections can
be most fruitful. This site is especially good for legislative and regulatory materials, and for regularly published reports such as the US federal budget, but also provides a link to GPO’s online bookstore
for more general government publications.
The FedStats website provides links to statistical pages of US federal government agencies. You can look up the statistic by topic without knowing in advance which agency produces it. The “About” page provides more information about what’s included in FedStats. Although this may lead to a lot of extractable and downloadable raw data in addition to statistics that are presented online, if you specifically need to locate machine-readable empirical or geospatial datasets generated by the US federal government you can try the Data.gov website. Datasets here may be in one of more the following formats: XML, CSV/Text, KML/KMZ, Shapefile, RDF, Other.
General search engines to search across websites of federal government agencies and Congress include USA.gov (the “official” such search engine) and Google U.S. Government (formerly Google Uncle Sam). Always feel free to consult with the library’s public documents subject librarian, Mark Thomas, and visit the paper collection of federal government publications (many older ones aren’t digitized or even in the library catalog) on the second floor of Perkins Library.
The study conducted by Harley and four others was comprehensive: It involved over 160 scholars from 45 elite research universities and includes 12 case studies representing as many disciplines (anthropology, English language literature, law economics and biostats, to name a few), in addition to an extensive literature review and daily environmental scans of issues in higher education.
As you might imagine, Harley and her colleagues gleaned an amazing amount of extremely rich data from their interviews of faculty, administrators, publishers and librarians. One surprise to Harley was the amount of time she and her colleagues spent discussing tenure and promotion (T&P) with their interviewees. Let’s consider just a few of Harley’s findings related to T&P and the role that scholarly publication plays in it:
– The most important aspect of T&P is a stellar publication record — service, teaching and public engagement are important but secondary to publication
– New journals and genres are acceptable — so long as they’re peer reviewed
– Peer review is the “coin of the realm” — it is the sole value system in academia, but…
– Peer review has problems: lack of speed, conservatism, bias, low quality reviews, non-scholar editors, cost to the institution to subsidize peer review via faculty salaries, lack of fraud and plagiarism detection
– T&P should be supportive of non-traditional forms of publication (e.g. Open Access journals)
– Publishers may say that they “do” peer review, but that’s not the case — faculty “do” peer review, at a cost to their institutions, NOT at a cost to the publisher
Do these ring true for you? Are these issues that you face in your work as a librarian, faculty member or aspiring scholar? How does the culture at Duke fit into this picture of T&P and scholarly communication? What can or should Duke Libraries do to support non-traditional forms of publication?
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 year or less, two to three years, and four to five years. “
The areas of emerging technology cited for 2010 are: Mobile Computing ; Open Content; Electronic Books; Simple Augmented Reality; Gesture-based Computing; Visual Data Analysis. The full report is available at: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD5810.pdf The July 12 Webinar presentations are also online at http://www.educause.edu/Resources/HorizonReport2010ProjectsinEBo/207847
This news item came to my attention via Resource Shelf http://www.resourceshelf.com/
Black Short Fiction and Folklore is the most comprehensive collection yet created of stories from African and the African Diaspora. When complete, it will feature 8,000 stories and folk tales published in more than 15 countries from the mid-1900s to the present. In addition to these published works, the database features previously uncollected works and unpublished manuscripts by many authors. We have an impressive collection of fables and folktales, which arise from oral traditions that date back hundreds of years.
The relevance of the collection extends well beyond literature:
Fables and folktales provide unique insights into a culture’s history and memories. Social anthropologists and psychologists will find this collection to be rich in myth and societal customs. The extensive indexing even makes it possible to see how certain parables evolve over time and to compare New World fables with those told in Africa today.
Ideas expressed here often are not found in mainstream publications; getting novels published through traditional publishing channels was often impossible for blacks. But through short stories, these writers could express themselves quickly and distribute their works effectively through literary journals and other alternative forms.
Historians will find the collection to be rich in political discourse, social commentary, and polemic.
Three recently created and published online collections of images, manuscripts, and theses in the field of Islamic Studies are indicative of a growing number of rich and diverse free online resources in this field.
Images: The Casselman Archive of Islamic and Mudejar Architecture in Spain provides access to over four thousand color slides and black and white photographs of medieval Spain taken by the late Eugene Casselman (1912-1996) during his thirty years of travel throughout the Iberian peninsula. The images span over one thousand years of architectural history, from the seventh to the seventeenth century.
Manuscripts: The Manumed project database consists of a body of 255,635 digital files and 13,373 descriptive summaries of manuscripts, prints, videos, radio broadcasts, etc. Besides a wide variety of French resources, it houses significant numbers of Arabic materials, among them manuscripts form the Library of Alexandria, Arabic medical manuscripts, Arabic and Berber manuscripts owned by a French repository, and the manuscripts of Lmuhub Ulahbib.
Theses: Researchers and librarians working in Islamic Studies now have online access to nearly 1000 Ph.D theses in the subject, spanning over ten years. JISC, The Academy and The British Library have combined their resources to bring together Islamic Studies theses from universities across the UK and Ireland.
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 and the first tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey: http://tiny.cc/aa2nt.
The Twitter archive joins the Library’s Web capture project that already has stored 167 terabytes of digital material.
There are some limitations. Personal tweets will not be collected and the Twitter archive will be available only for scholarly and research purposes.
Google doesn’t think you should have to wait for the Library of Congress to make archival tweets available—it’s turning on a feature that lets you choose a date and “replay” the tweets from that point on. Google’s search combines Twitter updates with those from MySpace, Facebook and Buzz.
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 more than 4,000,000 entries in NICNP (1911-1949). From 1833 to 1949, China experienced great changes from the dynastic reign to the establishment of Republic of China(1912) then to the founding of the People’s Republic of China(1949). These journals and newspapers record the major and minor events at that time, including two Opium wars in mid-19th century and the Japanese invasion of China(1937-1945). They are important primary source materials to the study of China’s politics, economics, ideas and culture in this period.
Now that the semester is over and you’re ready to begin your summer research or plan your courses for the fall, consider learning more about ways that the librarians at Duke Libraries can help.
These “Beyond the Stacks” sessions are part of the Center for Instructional Technology’s21st Century Teaching & Learning Workshop Series and are designed for faculty and graduate students interested in integrating library resources and services into their teaching. Participants will also, however, leave with valuable tips for using library resources in their research.
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.
The layers were created by Duke’s Facility Management and are being provided for download by Perkins Library’s Data & GIS Services Department. Categories of data include general campus features (e.g., building footprints, parking lots, crosswalks, Duke Garden trails), campus vegetation (e.g., coniferous trees, hedges), topography (contour lines), and color aerial photography in geo-referenced MrSID compressed format. The area of coverage includes not only West, Central, and East campuses, but many of the surrounding Durham neighborhoods. But no, undergrads, we have nothing showing the tunnels!
We hope to improve the documentation over time with improved metadata, as well as periodically update the layers. Users should contact Mark Thomas or other staff in the Data & GIS Services Department for help in using this data.
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 happened since those blog posts, including the release of Zotero 2.0. The new version has features that enhance collaboration and information sharing, one of Zotero’s four key functions (collecting, organizing, citing and collaborating). Your Zotero collection can now be synced between multiple computers, and you can backup your files on Zotero’s web server. If you want to collaborate with others to compile material in Zotero, you can now create a group, access material in real time, and move materials among group members. Groups can be public (here’s a list of public Zotero groups that you can join or view) or private (for a course assignment, research or work-related project).
What are some advantages of using Zotero? It’s fairly easy to learn to use it, it works with a wide variety of materials, the collaborative features are great, and it’s free.
NYU Libraries created a great site that compares Zotero, RefWorks and EndNote. Interested in migrating from EndNote to Zotero? Check out the useful migration instructions prepared by George Mason University.
More information about Zotero 2.0 can be found here. The Libraries are looking at how we can support Zotero at Duke. Stay tuned.
On April 20, 2010, the World Bank announced that it would offer free access to its global development and financial indicators. This puts the widely used and well-liked World Development Indicators (WDI), the Global Development Finance (GDF), the African Development Indicators, and the Global Economic Monitor (GEM) at the fingertips of anybody who wants to use them for analysis, policy development, decision-making, etc. (http://data.worldbank.org/). The data have become freely available to anybody who wants to re-distribute them, use them in mash-ups or apps. The World Bank has created a how-to guide and by mid-2010 will make the Web API available to developers. The data catalog offers an extensive listing of all databases and pre-formatted tables. The terms of use of the data are very liberal and impose very few restrictions.
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 CD or transfer them to a portable device like an iPod. Just browse, select, and download the title of your choice to your computer, then transfer your selection to a portable listening device for on-the-go audio enjoyment.
Subjects focus subjects focusing primarily on language learning, classic literature, history, and biography. Available titles include The Shawshank Redemption, Slaughterhouse Five, Atlas Shrugged or learn to speak French, German, Greek or Thai.
And here’s a pictorial history of our own Blue Devil.
Duke Libraries hold 112,186 unique titles that no other library in the world reports having.
We are 5th in the nation for our Film & Video holdings with 81,517 Film and Video titles collected.
Now that you’ve calmed down, don’t forget that the subject librarians have created research guides for you, and will meet with you to help you find sources for your papers. Here are some recent reviews of our services:
We hope you know that librarians are here for you – we are in the business of supporting research at all levels, assisting students, faculty, and everyone in the Duke community. In an effort to improve the services we provide, we are trying to better understand the research habits and needs of different groups at Duke. This is where the User Studies Initiative comes in. We are trying to get past our own preconceived notions about what our users need and base decisions about library services on empirical evidence. The User Studies Initiative is a staff development effort, providing librarians at Duke with the tools and know-how to conduct effective user studies.
On Monday, March 8th, a group of Duke librarians presented this work-in-progress to colleagues from across North Carolina at the annual LAUNC-CH Conference. Their talk, Know Thy User: Duke Libraries User Studies Initiative, demonstrated to other librarians the feasibility of conducting effective, targeted studies to better understand users’ needs and wants. Diane Harvey and Yvonne Belanger provided the big picture view of the initiative, and Emily Daly, Linda Daniel, and Shawn Miller discussed studies they are currently working on. To read more about the presentation, see Diane Harvey’s post on the new Instruction & Outreach blog.
What do you wish the library did that it doesn’t? The User Studies Initiative is an ongoing project intended to generate a culture of continual assessment and improvement of library services. Let us know what you think!
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, teachers and developers of software and web resources. Screencasting is especially useful in learning environments where it can be used to make live recordings of presentations or training sessions, to comment verbally on projects and assignments, to remotely show students how to use software or search a database, or for collaboration on projects. Developers can use screencasting to highlight features in new products or to give a tour of a website or resource.
These tools can also be used socially for things like sharing narrated slide shows with friends. More advanced tools with additional features, such as Camtasia and Adobe Captivate, are available for purchase. These tools allow you to edit your content and import still images, video, and PowerPoint slides and also let you create accessible tutorials and lessons through the use of closed captioning. Several basic tools such as Jing, Screenr and Screen Jelly are available for free. These online tools are designed for easy use so you can begin making screencasts immediately.
Have you tried any screencasting tools? What did you think?
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?
* US and global railcar manufacturing?
* Seeking 1968 Soviet physics journal?
* I spilled some coffee–do you have any paper towels?
* I am trying to locate a book of collected drawings of the Great Kanto Earthquake by children. I have found an oblique reference to it in a caption to an illustration without any bibliographic info?
* Stem cell biology in traumatic brain injury: effects of injury and strategies for repair?
* what citation management tool do you recommend?
* GIS : how to get started; availability of data for India?
* trouble accessing journal article?
* help finding articles for class?
* speech by Booker T. Washington in Atlanta, 1895?
* can you eat in the library?
* How to find Russian books?
* 2001 Indian Census volumes for Gujarat
* I can’t find this shelf at all, where are these books?
You can ask reference questions in person (Perkins Reference Desk), im/chat (click on the askusNOW icon), email (askref@duke.edu) or by phone (660-5880). Save some time and get the information you need quickly!
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 spaces
For those who want large spaces in which to study, the Gothic Reading Room on the 2nd floor of the oldest wing of Perkins (closest to the bus stop) could be perfect.
Individual spaces
On the 3rd and 4th floors of Perkins individual open carrels are available on the side facing CIEMAS. On lower level 2 of Perkins, you might find an individual table/chair tucked away at the ends of aisles. Individual carrels are available around the edges of the 5 upper stack levels in the oldest part of the building, accessed by making a u-turn around the circulation desk, entering level A, and taking the interior stairs to levels B-F. Additional open carrels are available at the back of the 3rd and 4th floors of Bostock.
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.
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 more than 1,200 “core” coverage journals dating as far back as 1895; and provides cited references that can also be searched.
SocINDEX with Full Text offers coverage for topics including: abortion, anthropology, criminology, criminal justice, cultural sociology, demography, economic development, ethnic & racial studies, gender studies, marriage and family, politics, religion, rural sociology, social psychology, social structure, social work, sociological theory, sociology of education, substance abuse, urban studies, violence, welfare, and many others.
In addition, SocINDEX with Full Text features over 25,000 author profiles. Each profile includes contact information, journals of publication, and author’s areas of expertise and professional focus.
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 promoting open scholarship by allowing researchers to display their research methods and results through video.
This site is focused in terms of content, focusing on the sciences, but could be helpful for a wide range of audiences. There are videos here for children through postgraduates. They build in nice browsing features as well, so users can select the proper language, audience, subject and sort by recency or popularity. Contributors also include figures, supplemental materials and links to the original article or presentation. The theme here is openess as anyone can view or contribute anything.
While not as slick and easy-to-use as YouTube, Research Channel focuses on high quality submissions from research universities, like Duke, and large organizations such as the National Institutes of Health. You can browse by institution, program title or subject and the quality is good and from respected sources.
An interesting and well-designed site. It focuses on videos about politics and economics, but also includes categories such as the environment, science, technology and culture. This is a great place to come to see mental celebrities (General Richard Meyers, Dr. David Kessler for example) talk about the subjects for which they are famous. FORA.TV can’t compete for YouTube in terms of volume, but it more than makes up for that with its quality and interesting discussions.
Another example of lower volume, but higher quality. These videos have big thinkers (if not always big names) discussing the big ideas. Instead of talks about individual research projects, these videos focus more on big-picture synthesis of research on important topics of the day. While it’s not the open model of SciVee or YouTube, Big Think provides a platform for discussion of important issues by those who speak knowledgeably and engagingly about them.
What are other good sites for publishing or viewing research-oriented videos?
*Thanks to Lisa R. Johnston for her SciTech News column which inspired this post.
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 screen display was clearer. Some also felt the wireless on the s12 was faster. Overall the larger model was easier to use while not compromising portability. Based on these findings, we will likely purchase the s12 to replace the current pool of loaner laptops next fall.
Patrons were also asked what software they would like on these laptops. Most said they would need Office and a Web browser but there were also requests for Adobe products and EndNote. What software would you would like us to include on the build?
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 recordings, as well as historical information on sound reproduction technology.
Xeno-Canto hosts an archive of bird sounds from across the globe and makes good use of Google Maps in its search and information display interfaces.
London Sound Survey is a nice example of how audio can contribute to an overall picture of a geographical place and its culture and history over time.
The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds (focusing only on sounds, not songs).
Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal music downloads directed by New Jersey’s freeform radio station WFMU.
This is just a small sample of what’s out there. Now it’s up to you to decide how audio could enhance your research, project or presentation. Here’s some inspiration: http://tenement.org/folksongs/client/
Even if you think you have no interest in printing, I urge you to listen to this very interesting podcast of To the Best of Our Knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio.
Interviewees include the designers of Gotham (the Obama campaign font) and Verdana (the Internet font) and Nicholson Baker on the Kindle. If you are interested in typefaces, you’ll swoon!
Come hear a talk by photographer Jennette Williams, whose exhibit of platinum prints of women in baths in Budapest and Istanbul is on display in the Perkins photography gallery through 13 December.
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?
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 links for local, on-site research assistance. For example, How do I begin my research? or Find a Librarian in my subject area? or ask for help are just a few of the services available to you through the Duke Libraries.
The catalog says the location for the item you want is “Library Service Center.” Where’s that? and what is it? The Library Service Center, or LSC, is a high-density shelving facility in East Durham that holds the library’s books and other materials for which there is no room in the campus libraries. With 30 ft. high shelves, it can hold 4 million volumes. No searching for call numbers on the shelf here – it’s all tied to barcodes. Check it out for yourself:
If you want something from LSC, click on the next to the title. Then click the Request link in the “Get This Title” box. Deliveries are made to and from campus libraries twice a day during the week and once on weekends.
Do midterms and research papers have you crying out “Run away! Run away!?” Take a study break and just say “ni!” to them for awhile with Duke Libraries Monty Python resources. You’ll find videos, books, audio, and music in our catalog.
Knights who say ni
Why? Because, those zany blokes are celebrating their 40th anniversary in NY City this week. Besides, it’s a proven fact that laughing yourself silly is an effective antidote to stress. According to a literature review in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services1
There are several beneficial efforts attributed to humor and laughter, including improved immune function, increased pain tolerance, and decreased stress response.
If you must rationalize it as schoolwork, you might hone your persuasive argument skills with The Argument Clinic
I don’t think there’s a punch-line scheduled, is there?
1 MacDonald, C. (2004). A chuckle a day keeps the doctor away: therapeutic humor & laughter. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services, 42(3), 18. http://search.ebscohost.com
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 Health Institute will discuss their experiences with information access in health projects around the world, as well as their interactions with health consumers and professionals in other countries.
Sponsored as part of Open Access Week by Duke University Libraries and the Duke Medical Center Library
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 have very detailed descriptive data (bilingual in many fields) and the images are of good quality themselves.
Taiwan Art Exhibition (1927-1943) Database 台灣美術展覽會資料庫 from Academia Sinica of Taiwan has Images of 2144 artworks from 16 art exhibits during Japanese colonial period. Information is in Chinese with Japanese titles.
Help them win $5k and notoriety through the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award!.
The award invites library users to recognize the accomplishments of librarians for their efforts to improve the lives of people in their community. Nominations will run through October 9 and are being accepted online at www.ilovelibraries.org/ilovemylibrarian.
Up to 10 librarians will be selected. Each will receive a $5,000 cash award, a plaque and a $500 travel stipend to attend an awards ceremony and reception in New York, hosted by The New York Times in December. In addition, a plaque will be given to each award winner’s library.
Nominees will be judged by a selection committee based on quality of service to library users, demonstrated knowledge of the library and its resources and commitment shown in helping library users.
One of the most pressing issues in global policy development is migration. The 2005 report by The Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) to the UN Secretary General Kofi Anan outlines the dimensions and dynamics of international migration. The report has focused the attention of a number of inter-governmental organizations (IGO) and agencies on a variety of aspects created by migration. While the 127 member-country International Organization for Migration (IOM) is the leading body to take on an advocacy role for the implementation of “safe and orderly migration” through research and policy development, agencies such as the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been monitoring monetary streams, called remittances, which are created by migrants who send part of their earnings back to their country of origin. These transfers have reached, according to a WB estimate, $397 billion in 2008, $305 billion of which were sent to developing countries by 190 million migrants or 3% of the world population. A recent IMF publication (Occasional Paper 259) traces the Macroeconomic Consequences of Remittances. The World Bank’s ‘Migration and Development Brief 10’ provides an Outlook for Remittance Flows 2009-2011: Remittances Expected to Fall by 7-10 Percent in 2009. The brief is accompanied by country-by-country data in Excel format. Figures on monthly remittance flows for selected countries are also available. These data update the Migration & Remittances Factbook 2008 (check availability @ Duke), a “snapshot of migration and remittances data for all countries, regions and income groups of the world, compiled from various sources.” The Migration & Remittances page on the World Bank site offers access to more papers and publications related to this topic. In addition, the World Bank blog People Move provides timely updates on emerging research findings and trends. It goes without saying that the services which send the money back to the migrants’ home countries are not free. The WB traces the cost of these transfers on its Remittance Prices Worldwide site.
It is to be hoped that the sheer magnitude of these transactions and their economic impact will help to focus attention on the humanitarian and ethical issues underlying the process of migration, issues which are often, despite the apparent beneficial financial results, less than benign.
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 late, we’ve been trying to find new avenues.
To answer the question above, I thought, ‘I wonder if there is a social networking site for scientists?’, did a Google search, and voila – Labmeeting!
The interesting part about Labmeeting is that it is only freely available to scientific researchers. You have to either get invited by a scientific researcher you know, or show online proof that you are doing scientific research. Or pay $99. Thus, not being a scientific researcher, nor willing to part with $99 for a look-see, I was unable to join.
A search on Duke presented 120 results and included the following:
Associate Professor at Duke University interested in the following topics: Monomeric lambda repressor, Ribonuclease P protein, Protein A, NMR, CD, fluorescence, stopped flow, amide exchange, dynamic NMR
PhD Student at Duke University interested in the following topics: In vivo model systems, genetic screens, immunoblotting
PhD Student at Duke University interested in the following topics: Photonics
Duke’s ePrint distributed printing system now allows you to print a job again without running back to your computer.
With ePrint, you send a job to the system and then swipe your card at any print station and select the job from your print queue. With ePrint rePrint, the job goes back into the print queue for 15 minutes. If you need to reprint the job within that timeframe, just swipe your DukeCard at any ePrint station and choose the job out of the list of available jobs in your print queue. (sincere thanks to the Duke Divinity school blog)
The World Cup will be played in South Africa in the summer of 2010 and important soccer matches are being played around the globe this fall to determine the thirty-two countries that will qualify for the tournament. To prepare you for these games, several books are available in the Duke Libraries on the subject of soccer and its global importance.
In Franklin Foer’s book, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, soccer is described as part of the economic, political, and cultural fabric of society. In a series of essays, Foer explores the cultural roots of fierce soccer rivalries around the world, rivalries that make battles between Duke and Carolina or the Red Sox and the Yankees look tepid. Matches between the Rangers and Celtic in Glasgow reflect the divide between the Protestant Rangers supporters and the Catholic Celtics and has roots in conflicts that date back to the Reformation. Matches between Barcelona and Madrid in Spain are recreations of the Spanish Civil War. Foer examines soccer as a liberalizing force in Iran and as a destructive force in Serbia, where soccer hooligans were used as death squads in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. Although Foer does not, as his title suggests, provide a unifying theory of soccer and globalization, this book is a fascinating study of soccer in its cultural context and provides vivid examples of how national conflicts are reflected in the game of soccer.
The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, provides essays about each of the thirty two countries that qualified for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Each essay presents a short summary of the soccer history of the country and how each team qualified for the tournament, and places soccer in the context of that country’s culture and politics. Examples include the importance of qualification to war-ravaged Angola, the impact of globalization on the English economy, and the relationship between jihad and soccer in Saudi Arabia. Although the 2006 World Cup is in the past, the profiles of each country are fascinating and informative, and deepen one’s understanding of the world and its relationship to the world’s most popular sport.
Grant Farred, a Duke University faculty member, traces his passion for Liverpool football from his early years in apartheid South Africa in his book, Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football. He explores the cultural context of soccer around the world. Farred provides a shocking history of how Argentina’s military junta used the success of the Argentinean team to cover its ruthless oppression of dissent. Farred brings an obvious passion for world football and the Liverpool team as a lens to examine the global struggle for freedom. Although American readers will not be familiar with many of the events and players that are important in the history of Liverpool football, the reader is swept along by the force of Farred’s narrative and the deeply personal nature of his writing.
There are interesting films and discussions being held on campus this fall in conjunction with Professor Laurent Dubois’ course, “World Cup and World Politics.” A series of films about soccer are free and open to the general public. Lilian Thuram, Caribbean-born French soccer player, activist and writer, will share his thoughts on sport, racism, and immigration as well as discussing the work of his new foundation. The talk will take place at the Nasher Art Museum on Nov. 10 at 7:00 pm. More information at http://soccerpolitics.com/.
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 Amazon, but there are some other options out there for online textbook shopping. Bookfinder searches across many online book retailers, making it easy to compare prices. Chegg is a big textbook rental site, allowing for use of books for only a short time.
Lifehacker tips – This site helped inspire the name of this blog and is a great source for little ways to make life better, often with technology, but often without.
Sleep better: Includes alarm clock suggestions and napping strategies
Take better notes: Taking notes seems simple enough, but there are three methods here for getting more out of those scribbles
Memory Hacks: Ten tips for remembering all you’re learning
For a large list of all types of web apps that could be helpful for students, check out this list from readwriteweb. This list is a couple years old, any new apps on the scene since then?
**Photo Credit:
Student raising his hand in a classroom, 1970
William Gedney Photographs and Writings
Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/gedney/
The Digital Projects Department is pleased to announce that the enhanced homepage will go live before classes begin on Monday. Thanks to all the Libraries’ staff who helped collect and interpret user input. The focus of the Libraries’ homepage is first to facilitate research, teaching and learning and second to promote our services and resources.
Here is a brief summary of enhancements based on that focus statement:
Digital Collections are now searchable from the homepage via a new tab in the ‘Search Our Resources’ section.
Links were reviewed and edited down to only those most used as was identified by statistics and a circle maps exercise.
Links to services and resources are given priority and located in the top portion of the site.
Help links (How Do I?…) are located under links to resources and services.
News headlines are now each aligned with a corresponding image. Clicking an image will bring you to the related story. Two news items display at a time; more can be accessed without leaving the homepage by clicking the left & right arrows.
Recent posts from the Libraries’ various blogs (including the professional school libraries) are displayed; use the left & right arrows to browse through posts without leaving the homepage.
In an effort to give greater prominence to the Libraries’ exhibits, an image and link for a current Library Exhibit is visible in the lower right portion of the screen.
You can preview these changes at the following URL while the DPD works to put them in production:
We will review these changes this fall and make adjustments as necessary. Please watch for invitations to participate in assessment activities for the Libraries’ web resources.
If you’re a Blackboard user, you may have noticed an addition to the left-side menu this past spring.
The new Library Guides button automatically directs you to a page of research tips and resources developed, in many cases, by a librarian who specializes in a subject area related to your course.
See a general research guide or a page that doesn’t reflect the goals of your course? Contact your subject specialist, who will replace the Library Guides link with a more appropriate page or work with you to design a guide specific to your objectives and assignments like the one below, which was created for a Writing 20 course:
If people are at all familiar with geographic information systems (GIS) software, they typically think of it as a tool for commercial cartographers or for government agencies needing to illustrate dry scientific reports. But GIS software offers students and researchers in any field (sciences, humanities, and social sciences) a powerful (and often, a remarkably simple) analysis and presentation tool whenever they’re dealing with information that has a locational element.
ArcGIS is great for analyzing any sort of data with a spatial element (for instance: data organized by county; associated with addresses; or containing latitude/longitude coordinates, such as GPS data).
You don’t even have to make a map … you might just want to answer questions about distance (example: what are the closest stores that sell tobacco to each school, and how far are they; or which such stores are within a certain distance from each school), location (example: for a set of crime data, identify the census tract that each crime is in, if you want to study socio-economic characteristics of the neighborhood); or network analysis (example: least-cost routes along roads and rivers to bring logs from tree plantations to mills). These are only a few of many possibilities (examples reflect real projects done here).
If you do want to build your own map for a paper or publication, ArcGIS is great for creating one that shows just the features you need, starting with a simple basemap and editing or adding more layers to created a customized presentation.
Google Earth has fewer analysis capabilities, but has a short learning curve and a large database of online geographic layers ready to go. Some sorts of data are easy to add (such as addresses or latitude/longitude coordinates). The map creation is less customizable than ArcGIS, but there are a lot of options for novel visualization. Some Duke users, for instance, have found it useful for creating attention-getting maps for poster sessions.
…Or, how to browse full-text collections of books and more in foreign libraries without leaving your chair. Contrary to popular belief, there is no single starting point for browsing open access Digital Collections for Western European Studies –the Europeana is as yet more of a vision than a reality.
Today’s spotlight is on finding digital libraries of full-text materials in German Studies as one example of browsing what is available from libraries abroad. Your best first stop is this excellent list of digital production centers dealing with German language materials: Digitale Sammlungen [Dr. Klaus Graf]. Add to this a website on Digitalisierung und Digitalisierte Bestände that lets you browse digital libraries by subject or by geographic area: you will find materials for the study of witchcraft ,travel literature , this includes travel in the Americas , and cook books for immigrants, to highlight just a few themes.
Digital Collections add international materials previously unavailable in US libraries. Take the debates of the Reichstag as an example: I remember well standing in the stacks at the Historisches Seminar Tübingen combing through the heavy volumes of the Reichstagsprotokolle to write a paper on the German politician Eugen Richter. These volumes are not held in US libraries, but today, I could search all of these volumes from my desktop through the free digital library of Reichstagsprotokolle.
A combination of free online content hosted abroad and Duke Holdings can add dimension to your syllabus. Contact me for help with Western European Studies: Heidi Madden
There are few things worse than working hard on a paper or a project, spending hours researching and writing only to lose that work and not be able to retrieve it. This can be just as frustrating when all your past work is lost because of a computer crash, lost flash drive, etc. Backing up your files is increasingly important, but often it’s something you don’t consider until it’s too late. Here are some strategies to make backing up easy. Take a look. Your future self will thank you.
Lifehacker did a feature on the various methods for recovering deleted files. This is for those moments when you’ve deleted a file and you realize it right away. Won’t work for every situtation, but when this happens, here are some helpful tips.
It’s now also possible to store your data and files “in the cloud.” This allows you to keep all your important items on a remote server that really helps if you delete something on your own machine or if your laptop is stolen or otherwise damaged. Some of these options allow you to schedule backups automatically, so your data is backed up without requiring you to remember to do so. Mozy and Carbonite are two of the leaders in this area, but there are many providers, all with their own storage limits, features, strengths, weaknesses and pricing models. Look to the comments about various providers in this blog post to get a sense of some of your options.
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.
At Duke, there are a number of great ways to work in the library wherever you are. You can use the library’s mobile website to find library hours, available computers, directions, contact info and more. If you’re doing medical research, take a look at Duke’s Medical Center Library mobile site. It’s full of features enabling you to do PICO analysis, browse e-journals, and link to many helpful mobile resources.
On the Digital Collections blog, it was recently announced that you can search, browse and view our Digital Collections on your mobile device. Be sure to watch the short video demonstrating the ease of this feature in their post announcing this new tool. Just announced this week, you can now watch vintage ads from Duke Libraries Hartman Center from Duke iTunes U.
There are other nice mobile tools outside of Duke as well. This is just a partial list and some of these are third-party apps, but this will give you an idea of the possibilities out there. Some useful apps include those for WorldCat.org, the arXiv pre-print server for physics, math, computer science, etc, or the Papers PDF organizer software in mobile form.
I’m sure I’ve missed some helpful mobile resources. What others are out there?
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 you find research tips, tools and strategies from librarians of all types from all over the world. Just type in a topic of interest and – PRESTO! – Hundreds of librarians are at your fingertips.
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.
Here is beefed-up, electronic version of your paper sticky note. Here you can create sticky boards and cover them notes, photos, to-do lists and documents and mark them up as you want. Then you can share them with group members and they can make and see edits and updates too.
This tool is a great way to organize your thoughts and is very easy to use. The interface is very appealing and is really fun to use. Plus, you can share your maps and collaborate with others with Twitter, Skype, iGoogle gadgets, Firefox add-ons and various export options. You can get a basic account (read: free) with up to six maps and premium accounts for a little more than free. Check out a completed map.
This is a similar tool to MindMeister. It’s not as feature-rich, but for what it does, it’s simple and easy. It has great keyboard shortcuts that allow for quick brainstorming and notetaking. Again, it keeps things organized and related in a way that you can make sense of all the notes you’re taking.
What you get here is basically a clean slate. It approximates a clean white board and you are free to doodle, add text, change colors, etc. It also has browser buttons that, when clicked, bring that web page into Twiddla where you can mark on them and share with others. This could be a helpful way to comment on the design or content of a web page and let others see your ideas.
What web tools do you like for keeping track of your thoughts and collaborating?
*Thanks to Lisa R. Johnston for her SciTech News column which inspired this post.
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.
Subject specialists, with language skills across the curriculum, are available to create online guides that showcase the wonderful range of non-English resources the library has on offer. These guides can be easily integrated into Blackboard for use by students.
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 a place to store and manage my online bookmarks
2. I’m collaborating with colleagues and I need a place where I can share information easily with my network
3. I need new ways to get recognition for my work
As a published author you can import and display your publication history (with citation counts!) using Elsevier’s extensive coverage of over 2.5 million validated author profiles and a database of 15,800 peer-reviewed journals.
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 Duke’s databases for your research, you can use RSS feeds to send you automatic updates on relevant articles, authors, journals, search results and citations.
These feeds allow you to automatically and effortlessly:
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.
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 you to perform searches in major databases, like Web of Science, JSTOR, Google Scholar and PubMed (to name a few). Articles retrieved from databases include rich metadata goodies, like full bibliographic info. The marketing of this tool seems to be geared towards science-related research, though it has potential for any form of research.
The $42 fee may be a deterrent to some, but students can purchase Papers at a 40% discount ($16.80). The application does wonders for organizing your papers, but does not support bibliographic managment (EndNote, RefWorks and Zotero).
For all the PC owners out there, sorry…the creators of Papers (Mekentosj) show no love for the PC. But check out an earlier post on the PC-friendly pdf organizer, Mendeley.
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.
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!
The Left Index™ is a complete guide to the diverse literature of the Left, with an emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside academia.
Topics covered include the labor movement, ecology & environment, race & ethnicity, social & cultural theory, sociology, art & aesthetics, philosophy, history, education, law and globalization.
Historically significant early Left publications such as The People (est. NY 1891) and The Class Struggle (1931 – 1937) along with classic texts by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and others, written in the formative years of the Left are also covered.
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 site includes one-off lectures on a given topic or entire courses from schools like Harvard, Princeton and UC-Berkeley. They can be browsed by university or subject area. Viewers also have an opportunity to rate each lecture or course so others can see which are “top-rated.” There are resources for many different subjects including political science, astronomy, religion and entrepreneurship. Get started with an Introduction to Ancient Greek History.
Lecturefox provides a search engine and browsable lists for lecture materials. The site indicates the title of the lecture, the university and whether video, audio, and/or notes are included. You can browse by chemistry, computer science, math and physics categories, but again, there are other subjects included.
The Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa collection consists of more than 180,000 pages of documents and images, including periodicals, nationalist publications, records of colonial government commissions, local newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, books, oral testimonies, life histories, and speeches.
Materials in the Struggles for Freedom collection have been selected to address the following five broad themes:
• the colonial system and its consequences;
• popular resistance;
• anti-colonial organisations;
• regional and international contexts; and
• wars of liberation, destabilisation, and internal conflicts.
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 hair pulling. Kudos to those who want to keep citing by hand…but for those who don’t, it’s….
REFWORKS to the RESCUE!
We’re kicking off a whole week of RefWorks training, which will run between March 30th to April 3rd, to introduce you to your new best citation friend.
What is RefWorks? It’s a web-based program that collects all your research and references in one handy spot, search and select them, and automatically generates citations and bibliography in whatever style your Professor is asking for.
There were three significant enhancements and three minor enhancement and/or fixes made to the Catalog (BETA)interface in the past two months, and we also have some additional updates about upcoming features to the system. If you have any concerns or questions about the Catalog (BETA)catalog interface, please send us a message via the feedback form.
UPDATES
Hold/recall requests can now be placed from within the Catalog (BETA) interface. You no longer have to jump to the Classic Catalog to place hold-requests and you will only need to sign-in once per session to place as many hold-requests as you like.
“My Reserves,” Tab. This tab provides you with listings of your current reserves materials. The tab requires you to sign on to see its contents, and only provides you with your course reserves information. This is a strong departure from the “classic” catalog’s “reserves” tab in that it doesn’t require you to remember (and correctly spell) your course numbers/instructors/titles, and provides total course reserves information on a single page. We are hopeful that this approach will provide dramatically improved functionality.
The system now uses an enhanced login process, with auto-logout timing for all users. You can log in using either your NetID or your library card number from a single log-in screen that defaults to using your NetID when available. All users’ sessions are also now timed so that they will end after a certain period of inactivity (currently, a half-hour of inactivity for logged-in patrons, an hour for non-logged-in users). Unlike the Classic Catalog, the auto-logout feature does not refresh the browser page and steal the computer’s focus; instead, the system performs the logout in the background when a user next tries to access the system.
Implemented Google Analytics for browsing statistics (completed February 4, 2009). Since early February 2009, all web traffic in the integrated search environment (Endeca, Metalib, etc.) has been logged by the Google Analytics tool for future analysis.
Syndetics book-cover-images now served up via the “Limelight” network (completed March 5, 2009). Implemented appropriate URL changes to provide Syndetics cover-images through Syndetics’ Content Delivery Network (Limelight); hopefully this will increase cover-image display/response rates as the cache-system gets progressively more data. Note that this does not affect the response speed (or failure rates) of other Syndetics enriched content, such as Summaries, Table of contents, First Chapters, etc.
Catalog interface no longer errors out when going directly from a results-list page to a full-record page (which was not part of the results-list) and then trying to search again on the unchanged terms and index that produced the original results-list.
DIACRITICS
There is good and bad news on the diacritics front. On the negative side, after extensive testing of the thesaurus-based solution in Catalog (BETA)version 6.x, the Search TRLN Operations Committee ultimately came to the conclusion that even the performance enhancements in the newer version of Catalog (BETA)were not sufficient to mitigate the performance problems introduced by using a custom-built thesaurus to provide full diacritics-searching support.
On the positive side, additional extensive testing on a “normalization” strategy appears to provide a stable, performance solution to the long-standing issue of diacritics-searching support. Even better, this solution works on the existing version of Catalog (BETA), which means that a solution is not tied to upgrading Catalog (BETA)on the Search TRLN servers.
Currently, there is no specific date set for implementing the solution, but it is likely to take place in early April 2009. At that time we can hope to say with assurance (really!) that the Endeca-based catalog can handle diacritics searches. Thanks to every one for their patience in this important aspect of the system.
UPCOMING PLANS FOR THE INTERFACE
Incorporation of “My Library Card” functionality into the interface
Incorporation of “shopping cart”-like features in the interface so that you can manage multiple catalog (or article) records at once
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!
Try Doodle. Doodle is an online tool that makes it easy to schedule group meetings and other appointments. Doodle is simple, quick, free and requires no registration.
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, so that you can access them while you are away from your computer. Mendeley Web also serves as a social networking tool for connecting with researchers in your field.
When adding PDFs to Mendeley’s desktop client, Mendeley extracts the metadata (author, title, publication info, etc.) and creates a record for each PDF that you add to your Mendeley library. In addition to storing your PDFs, you can use the tool to add annotations and tags.
How does Mendeley differ from a tool like Zotero? In a nutshell, Mendeley grabs citation info from a PDF, whereas Zotero grabs citation info from webpages. Many reviewers note that the Mendeley’s sharing and collaboration features are superior to other tools, including tools like Zotero. Reviewers also pointed out another notable difference in the development philosophies of these tools…Zotero is ‘open source’ (developers are sharing the code, so that many people can contribute). Whereas, Mendeley is currently a closed, commercial product.
Note: Mendeley is still in ‘Beta’, which means its developers are still tweaking the tool!
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 are asked each day? How do you get that kind of information?
Why, from Twitter of course! If you’re already glued to Twitter, then you can follow us now! While you can post anything you want to your account, we try to keep it interesting.
Our updates range from tips on ways to use our services (like texting a librarian if you’re in the movable stacks and they are stuck) to highlighting important days (two weeks ago we celebrated W.E.B. Du Bois’s birthday on Twitter by including a link to some of his works in our collection). Sometimes librarians are pretty hip, so we Tweeted about our Full Frame Film Archive for those of you who couldn’t get enough of the Oscars last week.
And sometimes…sometimes we get questions that are just awesome. So we will Tweet them to give you something to think about. You want an example? “Where can I find information about spontaneous cataracts in dogs and monkeys?” So, yeah. You’re interested.
Find us by searching for ‘askref’ or just click here.If you have yet to enter the Twitterverse, you can check out these frequently asked questions to see what it’s all about!
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 a question via text message and you’ll get an answer on your mobile device within minutes. Send a message to 265010 (that’s right, just six digits), enter ‘dukeref:’ followed by your question and send.
This can be handy if:
You’re on the bus and you want to confirm that the library is open
You want to see if that book on reserve is available right now
You’re in the library and you can’t seem to locate your book or get the shelves to move
You have a research question and you just love to talk with your thumbs
Messages are limited to 160 characters and texting rates apply. But if you like to text, you knew that already.
Google Scholar is an excellent tool for searching across a set of scholarly journals and books, but how do you get your hands on the articles or books that you find? When you’re using Google Scholar off campus, you’ll need to set your Scholar Preferences to recognize Duke University Libraries.
Select the link for Scholar Preferences:
Under the section Library Links, enter Duke University Libraries and then select Find Library:
Make sure you select the Save Preferences button before beginning your search!
Once your preferences are set, you’ll see the Get it @ Duke link next to your search results. The Get it @ Duke link will connect you to the online or print version of the article/book in the library:
Do you use a citation tool, like EndNote or RefWorks? You can also set your Scholar Preferences to provide links to import your citations to EndNote or RefWorks:
If you have any more questions about Google Scholar, Ask a Librarian!
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 activities.
Using DailyLit, you can read short sections of books each day, received by email or RSS feed. Each installment is very short (intended to be read in 5 minutes) and can be sent daily, on weekdays, Monday-Wednesday-Friday, etc. Some books are available for a fairly small fee, but many others are available for free.
Writing a history paper? Need background information on your topic? Cambridge History Online provides online access to over 250 Cambridge history volumes. These volumes cover a wide range of subjects including American history, British history, economic history, general history, history of science, history of the book, and the history of language and linguistics.
Key Features:
Search and browse full-text content across all subjects and volumes
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 outside of Duke’s libraries
For more extensive collections, check out your local public libraries:
Chapel Hill residents (requires a Chapel Hill Public Library card):
Download audiobooks from the NC Digital Library here.
Durham residents (requires a Durham County Library card):
Download audiobooks from Overdrive here.
You may need to contact the library for your ‘PIN’, but it should be the last 4 digits of the telephone # you used to get your library card.
**Unfortunately, these downloadable books are not compatible with iPods.**
Both Chapel Hill & Durham also have collections of Books on CD & cassette on-site.
Free audiobooks are available from the following sites. These include mostly books that are in the public domain (published before 1923, roughly): librivox.org, audiobooks.org, and Project Gutenberg.
There’s always the option of podcasts, too! Like this ‘podiocast’ site for serialized fiction: podiobooks.com. Free podcasts (and not-so-free audiobooks) are also available from commercial sites like, iTunes, Audible.com and Amazon.
SimplyMap lets users create professional quality maps for use in presentations, research reports, business plans, or Websites. Data variables can be viewed at the State, County, ZIP Code, Tract and Block Group levels.
Want to know the top 10 wealthiest ZIP codes in your state? How about the top 25 counties with the most elderly residents? These and similar questions are easily answered by ranking locations using any data variable in SimplyMap.
SimplyMap includes access to thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables such as consumer expenditure, real estate, crime and many more.
Everything you do in SimplyMap can be exported in multiple formats for further customization and analysis. Create and export large amounts of data or detailed reports as Excel or CSV files. Advanced users can even export shapefiles for use in their own GIS software.
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? And ensuring that you are working with the most current version can also cause confusion.
Dropbox, in beta phase, could provide a better way. Download the software onto the computers that you use and want to be connected and link them with your single Dropbox account. It fits right into the file directory systems for Windows or Mac machines. You just have to drag and drop the files and they are immediately synced between computers. Revisions or changes made to the file are immediately available in multiple computers. Your Dropbox folder also has a public folder which you can share with friends and co-workers. This could help facilitate group projects where many people on many computers are working with the same files.
There is no online storage of files with Dropbox, but it does revision history, so if you accidentally save a file and want to revert to an old version or deleted a file, Dropbox can recover any previous version. Check out the video below for a complete demonstration of its features.
India, Raj and Empire provides documents pertaining to the History of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947.
The database includes original manuscript material, comprising diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works.
Documents are arranged around the following themes:
The East India Company: Government and Administration c.1750-1857; Agriculture and Trade c.1750-1857; Society, Travel and Leisure c.1750-1857; The Mysore and Maratha Wars; Indian Uprising 1857-58; The Raj: British Government and Administration of India after 1858; Agriculture and Trade after 1858; Society, Travel and Leisure after 1858; and India: Literature, History and Culture.
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 Duke Library resources from whatever web page you’re on. A version for Firefox has been available for some time but the creators of LibX have now released a version that works in Internet Explorer (IE) 6 and 7.
More information about what you can do with LibX, where to get it, and how to install it in both Firefox and IE can be found on the Library’s LibX Tool page.
Beginning January 19, 2009 the Duke University Libraries will use Google Analytics to gather statistics on portions of its web site. The Libraries will use the information gathered to improve web services for its patrons. Google Analytics employs cookies to define user sessions , which allows for the collection of important data about how our patrons are using the Library’s site. Google Analytics uses only first-party cookies for data analysis. This means that the cookies are linked to the Libraries’ website domain(s), and Google Analytics will only use that cookie data for statistical analysis related to your browsing behavior on the Libraries’ websites According to Google, the data collected cannot be altered or retrieved by services from other domains. If you choose, you can opt out by turning off cookies in the preferences settings in your browser. For more information on Google Analytics, please visit Google’s web site.
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. And let’s not forget the feeling of foolishness associated with giving canned voice commands to a computer. Shouted expletives generally aren’t understood by these calm-voiced operators.
There is, however, a resource for getting to human operators. In 2005, Paul English created the gethuman database, which has a listing of companies and services from insurance to hardware. For each phone service, there is a list of instructions for what to do to get out of the automated menus.
In addition to this original database, there is get2human.com, which is “more actively maintained” than the original site, but which has some obvious design differences.
Writing this post made me think about how interacting with companies like those listed in the gethuman site differs from the interactions that users have with libraries at Duke and elsewhere. Duke Libraries has expanded its service points from face-to-face contact to include phone, email, IM chat and now text messaging (click here to see all the ways to contact reference staff). But regardless of the method of communication, you’ll always reach an actual person who is trained and eager to help answer your questions. We hope this service enhances your work and keeps your blood pressure low.
**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 Web. Web sites and pages within those sites change so quickly that the past is easily forgotten. It can be very interesting to look back at changes in layout and content and to track trends.
We wrote about the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine as a way to look at selected snapshots of Web pages in the past. The Wayback Machine has saved a huge quantity of data and is a unique tool for preserving the Web of the past. Zoetrope adds the ability to track changes by creating tools for easily browsing past Web pages. Users could use a slider to move back and forward in time. As displayed in the video, you could also create a “lens” to track a specific piece of information like the price of gasoline and compare it to the price of oil over time.
During the current testing phase, Zoetrope creators chose 1,000 websites that update frequently and stored information captured every hour over four months. While this is much more limited than what the Internet Archive is saving, the Internet Archive has expressed an interest in sharing its data. Maybe soon we’ll be able to use the Zoetrope tools to browse and analyze the vast data of the Internet Archive.
The video best displays the cool features of Zoetrope. Take a look and comment on some of its possible applications for personal or research use.
The Latinobarómetro is an annual study of public opinion in eighteen Latin American countries.
Latinobarómetro has the goal of providing a representative survey of Latin American public opinion over time and provides annual measures of attitudes toward democracy, civic culture, economic issues, gender issues, the environment, inequality, social capital, and trade policy.
Latinobarómetro covers Latin America from 1995-1998 and 2000-2006.
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 screen display was clearer. Some also felt the wireless on the s12 was faster. Overall the larger model was easier to use while not compromising portability. Based on these findings, we will likely purchase the s12 to replace the current pool of loaner laptops next fall.
next to the title. Then click the Request link in the “Get This Title” box. Deliveries are made to and from campus libraries twice a day during the week and once on weekends.
If people are at all familiar with 
