Foreign languages, Librarians, Library Hacks

A ramble to foreign libraries

August 3, 2009 Heidi Madden, Ph.D.

…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

Library Hacks, Uncategorized

Back it up!

July 30, 2009 Michael Peper 5 Comments

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.

Lifehacker gives you step-by-step instructions for setting up automatic backups to an external hard drive.

Finally, Wired magazine provides a feature with several backup options for Windows PC users and Mac Users.

Have you found any backup strategies that are easy and effective?

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Cool tools, Database Tip, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

Want the Library Everywhere? There’s an App for That

July 22, 2009 Michael Peper 6 Comments

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?

Cool tools, Librarians, Library Hacks, Life in the library

Can’t get enough Library Hacks?

July 14, 2009 libraryhacks

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.

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

Tree-saving Sticky Notes

July 7, 2009 Michael Peper 1 Comment

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.

Stixy

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.

MindMeister

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.

Bubbl.us

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.

Twiddla

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.

**Photo credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/outofluck/ / CC BY 2.0

Cool tools, Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Original research

Facebook for Faculty (Part Two)

June 30, 2009 libraryhacks

Name ambiguity is a recurring issue that impacts research accuracy and quality, career advancement and tenure, global collaboration among researchers, and identification and attribution of funding for institutions and individual authors alike.

ResearcherID.com by Thomson Reuters (the creators of ISI’s Journal Citation Reports) allows researchers to:

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

Learn More…

Written by Nathaniel King

Foreign languages, Library Hacks, Research Help

Library Guides in Non-English Languages

June 26, 2009 libraryhacks

Attention: Faculty and Teaching Assistants

Do you teach classes in non-English languages?

Does your class need library resources?

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.

Would you like a library guide for your class? Ask a Librarian!

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Duke researchers, Library Hacks

Facebook for Faculty (Part One)

June 22, 2009 libraryhacks 1 Comment

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.

Learn more…

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Database Tip, Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

Are you up-to-date?

May 28, 2009 libraryhacks 2 Comments

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:

-Find out who’s citing your work

-Find new research in your field…

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Original research, Research Help

Publish or Perish

May 22, 2009 Michael Peper 2 Comments

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.

Cool tools, Library Hacks

iTunes for Your Papers

April 28, 2009 libraryhacks 2 Comments

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.

Written by Hannah Rozear

Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Original research

Want $1000?

April 22, 2009 Emily Daly 2 Comments

Want $1000?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

The Left Index™

April 20, 2009 libraryhacks 1 Comment

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.

Click here to access the Left Index™.

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Tips for students

Free video lectures

April 13, 2009 Michael Peper 4 Comments

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.

Some lectures can also be found at individual university sites such as MIT’s OpenCourseWare project, UC-Berkeley’s YouTube page and of course all the resources available at iTunesU at Duke.

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa

April 6, 2009 libraryhacks

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.

Click here to access the Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa collection.

Written by Nathaniel King

Citing Sources, Cool tools, Library Hacks

Timesaver=Lifesaver

March 30, 2009 libraryhacks

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.

In other words, RefWorks is a Lifesaver!

Drop by and learn more all week:

Mon. March 30: Bryan Center 12-2 pm

Tue. March 31: Lilly Library 1-3 pm

Wed. April 1st: Perkins Library 1-3 pm

Thu. April 2nd: East Campus Marketplace 12-2

Fri. April 3rd: Bryan Center Plaza 12-2 pm

Written by Kyla Sweet-Chavez

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks, Research Help

Catalog (Beta) Improvements!

March 24, 2009 Debra Kurtz 1 Comment

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

Cool tools, Library Hacks

Doodle: Easy Scheduling

March 23, 2009 Debra Kurtz

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.

You can also use Doodle…

…from your Mobile (beta)

…in Facebook

…in iGoogle

Cool tools, Duke researchers, Library Hacks

Mendeley: Manage, Share & Discover Research

March 19, 2009 libraryhacks 4 Comments

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!

You can have a look at the features here: http://www.mendeley.com/tour

Written by Hannah Rozear

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Life in the library, Tips for students

Tweet Tweet! AskRef’s Twitter Feed!

March 3, 2009 libraryhacks

Are you all-a-twitter about Twitter? So are we!

If you have questions, you can go to the reference desk or IM, email and text librarians. But what if you just want some general updates on library happenings? What if you’re curious about some of the fascinating questions we 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!

Written by Tiffany Lopez

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

r u prplxt? snd a txt!

February 26, 2009 Michael Peper

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.

Library Hacks, Question of the Week, Tips for students

Google Scholar Tips

February 23, 2009 libraryhacks 1 Comment

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!

Written by Hannah Rozear

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Tips for students

Read books one email at a time

February 19, 2009 Michael Peper 3 Comments

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.

You can search or browse by author, title or cateogry. Try out Darwin’s On the Origin of Species or Austen’s Price and Prejudice for free.

Database Tip, Duke researchers, Library Hacks

Cambridge Histories Online

February 9, 2009 libraryhacks

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
Easily export citations

Click here to access Cambridge Histories Online.

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Life in the library, Tips for students

Audiobooks

January 29, 2009 libraryhacks 6 Comments

Image by Jeff Daly

Want a good book for a long car ride? Like to listen to fiction while doing your laundry?
Check out these tips for finding free audiobooks on the web and in local libraries.

Audiobooks available in the library:
Audiobooks (on cd and cassette) in Lilly
These books are in Locked Media–bring the call number to the Lilly desk.
Audiobooks in Ford library
These have a 1-week loan period.

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.

Written by Hannah Rozear

Database Tip, Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

SimplyMap

January 26, 2009 libraryhacks 3 Comments

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.

Written by Nathaniel King

Click here to access SimplyMap.

Cool tools, Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Tips for students

Sync Files on Multiple Computers

January 19, 2009 Michael Peper

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.

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

India, Raj and Empire

January 12, 2009 libraryhacks

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.

Click here to access India, Raj and Empire.

Written by Nathaniel King

Catalog Tip, Cool tools, Library Hacks, Tips for students

LibX now available for IE

January 7, 2009 Jim Coble 1 Comment

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.

Duke researchers, Librarians, Library Hacks, Life in the library

New – Google Analytics on Library Web Site

December 19, 2008 Debra Kurtz 2 Comments

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.

Cool tools, Library Hacks

How to find a human

December 19, 2008 Michael Peper

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.

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

Zoetrope: Browse the pages of Internet past

December 11, 2008 Michael Peper 1 Comment

**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.

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Latinobarómetro

December 3, 2008 libraryhacks

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.

Click here to access Latinobarómetro.

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Tips for students

Finding a Library computer during crunch-time…

November 24, 2008 Thomas Crichlow 3 Comments

To see a list showing how many computers are available at various Library locations around campus, point your cell phone’s browser to a new page on the Library’s mobile website: http://library.duke.edu/mobile/workstations.do

This is part of a beta site providing Library web content formatted specifically for cell phones and other handheld devices (iPod Touch, Blackberry, etc.). Feel free to give us your feedback letting us know what Library information you’d like to access via your cell phone’s browser.

Kudos to Jim Coble, Matt Gates, and Jason Simons for making data on available computers accessible to our patrons.

We also have a set of pages on the Library’s main website, http://library.duke.edu/services/workstations/, that displays the same information graphically.

Duke researchers, Librarians, Library Hacks, Life in the library

Reference Desk, 1958

November 19, 2008 libraryhacks 4 Comments

What kinds of questions did Duke students ponder 50 years ago?
Here’s a glimpse at some of the questions recorded by Duke Reference librarians in 1958:

Have we (the U.S.) ever been out of debt?

I have to write a paper on the origin of the earth.

I want material on the moon in July 1778.

Where can I find material on safety items in airplanes, like ejection seats?

Is Thurston the Magician still alive? If so, where does he live?

Where can I find how many witches were killed in Europe?

Can you recommend a book on “mind reading”?

Where can I find how to grind the lens of a telescope?

I need some quarto-sized pictures of prehistoric man.

What color is the star Venus in the morning sky?

Are the people of Massachusetts called “Massachusettentians”?

Could you give me a list of brand names of all whiskey made in the U.S.?

I want a list of cities with their pollen counts, so I can locate to a pollen-free community.

Shortly after World War I (probably 1924), you sent me a booklet on inflation. As I recall it, that booklet discussed the evils of inflation and what happened to people in the area it hit. I would like to get a copy of it as a more modern version.

What is the source of the quotation “It is better to light a candle, than to curse the darkness”?

Where in the Manhattan yellow sheets should I look for a company which handles foreign exchange currency and sending money abroad?

I ate some fruit at lunch and I’ve forgotten what it is. Can you help me?

I am writing a 1500 word paper (due tomorrow!)–on how to set up a beach (life saving corps, etc.).

Who makes Edith Lance bras? I want to write a complaint to the company…

Image credit: “Studying Dink, 1957.” Duke University Archives. Durham, NC. USA. library.duke.edu/uarchives. Accessed Nov. 17th, 2008.

Written by Hannah Rozear

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

China Data Online

November 17, 2008 libraryhacks 1 Comment

China Data Online includes two parts: economic statistics and census data. It includes the economic statistics of China, arranged by regions and categories; monthly and yearly reports on China’s macroeconomic development; statistical databases about China’s population and economy at the county and city level; and financial indicators of more than 568 industrial branches.

Duke’s subscription includes (1) China Yearly Macro-economy Statistics (1949-), (2) China Monthly, Macro-economy Statistics (1998-), (3) Monthly Reports on Economy Development (2002-), (4) China City Statistics (1996-), (5) China County Statistics (1997-), (6) China Industrial Data (2001-), and (7) various statistical yearbooks (2002-).

The database also includes census data, including census data from 1982, 1982 (10%), 1990, 1995 (survey), and 2000 (county and province level).

Click here to access China Data Online.

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Research Help

Search beyond Google

November 10, 2008 Michael Peper 1 Comment

Search Many of us use Google to search the web for personal research and library resources for scholarly publications. Sometimes, however, it’s not clear whether what we need will be on the web or in scholarly literature. I’d like to point out some nice search engines for specific types of information that combine the ease of Google with the specialization of a library database. These tools could help you make sense of the web.

To find more like these, go here for a list of 100 Useful Niche Search Engines.

Scirus – Specializing in scientific information, it allows researchers to search for journal content and also scientists’ homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information. Also, its new ‘topics pages‘ are Wikipedia-style entries with identified (usually scholarly) authors.

Meta-Index to U.S. Legal Research – This site gathers search engines for U.S. legal information from across the web and puts them all in the same place. It points you towards good tools for searching legislation, judicial opinions and regulations on the web.

CiteSeer – This search engine for computer science and information science is full of features including citation analysis tools.

InternshipPrograms – A nice way to search for internships and for organizations to find interns. Register by including your résumé and interests.

Clusty – Provides search results in a list, but also includes a sidebar with categories, so you can review results by subject area.

Google – Don’t forget about Google’s own features such as Advanced search, Google Books, Google Scholar, Google News, etc.

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Russian Resources

November 4, 2008 libraryhacks

The Universal Databases provides a unified search engine for several Russian language databases: Russian Central Newspapers (UDB-COM), Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press (UDB-CD), Social Sciences & Humanities (UDB-EDU), Voprosy istorii: Complete Collection (UDB-VI), and Voprosy literatury: Complete Collection (UDB-VL).

The multilingual interface offers transliteration and Russian/English search capabilities.

Click here to access the Universal Databases.

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

Academic Skills Videos

October 30, 2008 Michael Peper 1 Comment

New to college and looking for advice about how to get started researching and writing all these papers?
Want to give your students some extra help in learning how to navigate the research process in an academic environment?
Are you just a sucker for charming Canadian accents?

The University of Prince Edward Island has created a really nice set of videos to help students with skills like active and critical reading, choosing a topic, using library databases and essay building. The videos are about 5-10 minutes long and are fast-moving and clear in the style of the “… in Plain English” series.

These videos could be really helpful and even enjoyable for people who have a long list of papers, but just can’t seem to get started. Good luck!

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

PrimateLit

October 27, 2008 libraryhacks

PrimateLit provides access to the scientific literature on nonhuman primates for the research and educational communities.

Coverage of the database spans 1940 to present and includes all publication categories (articles, books, abstracts, technical reports, dissertations, book chapters, etc.) and many subject areas (behavior, colony management, ecology, reproduction, field studies, disease models, veterinary science, psychology, physiology, pharmacology, evolution, taxonomy, developmental and molecular biology, genetics and zoogeography).

Click here to access PrimateLit.

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Database Tip, Duke researchers, Librarians, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

Subject Librarians to the rescue!

October 23, 2008 libraryhacks

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No! It’s…it’s…a subject librarian!

I know that some of you think your professors have sent you out into the world of research and writing with no allies and no weapons. I’m here to tell you that you are mistaken. A group of superhero-like librarians have been summoned from the ends of the earth and brought to Duke to equip you with subject specific knowledge and tools.

Trying to figure out if you need a subject librarian? Do you have a really specific topic? Are you looking for data, obscure documents or resources? Do you feel the need for an in-depth research consult? If you answered yes to any of these questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

Astronomy? Got it. Korean Studies? Yep. Music Media? You know it! And that’s only a taste of the subject coverage we’ve got! What’s that? You want to contact them right away? You want to learn more about the subjects they cover? I thought you might feel that way. All the information you need is here.

If you still have questions, don’t forget that the reference desk is always a great place to start. You can always save time and ask a librarian!

Written by Tiffany Lopez

Featured Database, Library Hacks

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

October 20, 2008 libraryhacks

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 35,000 slave voyages to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This database allows users to search for specific voyages of slaving expeditions. Users can also create listings, tables, charts, and maps using information from the database.

Use the interactive estimates page to analyze the full volume and multiple routes of the slave trade.

Use the African Names Database to identify over 67,000 Africans aboard slave ships, using name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation.

Click here to access the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Library Hacks

Library Website on Your Phone

October 15, 2008 Thomas Crichlow 6 Comments

What is it?

A website optimized for use on handheld devices such as cellphones, iPods, and PDAs:

http://library.duke.edu/mobile

These are new web pages created specifically with the needs of mobile users in mind.
This pilot project does not duplicate the main library web site — mobile device users can still access the content on the main library web site when in need of more detailed information.

Key points about our pilot:

Compact display: information optimized for the very small screen space available on handheld devices — every pixel counts.
Compact file size: patrons often pay a fee for each byte transmitted to their device, and handheld devices often have very slow connection speeds — every byte counts.
Tightly focused content: the content we provide is closely tied to the tasks people are most likely to undertake on a handheld device — context counts.
Optimized Navigation: navigation is optimized for handheld devices (e.g., using access-keys for keypad navigation).

Feedback, Suggestions, or Questions?

We are keenly interested in your ideas. Please post your comments letting us know what Library information would be helpful to you if it were part of the http://library.duke.edu/mobile website.

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Digital Library of the Caribbean

October 13, 2008 libraryhacks

The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.

Collections include newspapers, photographs, archives of Caribbean leaders and governments, official historical documents, and historic and contemporary maps.

Click here to access the Digital Library of the Caribbean.

Written by Nathaniel King

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Blue Devil Press

October 6, 2008 libraryhacks

The library has recently obtained access to Duke University Press Scholarly Books.

Duke University Press Scholarly Books provides easy access to the Library’s electronic Duke University Press titles.

The Collection includes online access to around 100 new scholarly books published by Duke University Press in the humanities and social sciences. In addition to new books, the Collection also includes access to all of the Press’s backlist books that are available in electronic form.

Click here to access Duke University Press Scholarly Books.

Written by Nathaniel King

Library Hacks, Question of the Week, Tips for students

Want to vote in North Carolina?

October 3, 2008 Michael Peper 1 Comment

Enjoying the presidential and vice-presidential debates? Been following the campaigns in North Carolina for Governor and U.S. Senate? Ever wondered if you could register and vote in North Carolina?

As the general election approaches, here are some important things to remember:

The general election is on Tuesday, November 4.
The last day to register in North Carolina for the November 2008 election is Friday October 10.
In North Carolina, you only need to live in the county where you register for 30 days before the election.
This means Duke students are eligible to vote in North Carolina.
Check out this voting guide for Duke students that has much more information and links to other resources like the Federal Election Commission, the North Carolina Board of Elections, etc.

Database Tip, Featured Database, Library Hacks

UNdata – A world of information

September 29, 2008 libraryhacks

UNdata pools major UN databases and those of several international organizations into a single entry point for easy access. Users can easily browse, search and download data from a large number of statistical databases.

Data categories include: agriculture, education, employment, energy, environment, health, human development, industry, information and communication technology, national accounts, population, refugees, trade, and tourism.

Data sources include, but are not limited to: UN Statistics Division, UN Population Division, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Labour Organization, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, World Tourism Organization and UNESCO.

Click here to visit the UNdata site.

Written by Nathaniel King

Cool tools, Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Tips for students

The Wayback Machine

September 25, 2008 libraryhacks 1 Comment

Do you ever come across the following error message while doing research on the Internet?

————————————————————————————–

Not Found

The requested URL /was not found on this server.

————————————————————————————–

There may be a solution! The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine allows you to browse through 85 billion (!) web pages that have been archived since 1996. Simply enter the URL of the site and the Wayback Machine will show you all the available versions of the site since 1996.

For example, ever wondered what the Google page looked like before Google became a household name. Click this link to see the Google page from 1999.

Written by Nathaniel King

Citing Sources, Library Hacks

Ultimate Citing: EndNote VS. RefWorks

September 18, 2008 libraryhacks

In the competitive world of Ultimate Citing, two kingpins rule the ring…RefWorks and EndNote, the academic world’s leading bibliographic management tools. Lucky for you, Duke has a subscription to both, so the choice is yours!

	RefWorks	EndNote
Registration	Register for your free account here	Download for free here
Access	Web-based (Any computer w/ Internet access)	Not web-based. Access through any computer(s) in which you’ve installed EndNote
Most Useful for…	Collaborative projects, term papers, coursework	Complex research projects, dissertations, lengthy tomes
# of Bibliographic styles	3000+	800+
Classes	Register here	Register here
PC and Mac Compatability	Web-based, so will work on any computer w/ internet	Versions available for both MAC and PC

Neither RefWorks or EndNote have figured out how to write your papers for you, but both are excellent tools for managing and formatting citations. Learn more about RefWorks here and EndNote here

Written by Hannah Rozear

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Declassified Documents

September 15, 2008 libraryhacks

The Library has recently obtained access to Declassified Documents Reference System (DDRS), a collection of declassified documents from various government agencies such as the White House, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and others.

DDRS makes possible both broad-based and highly targeted investigation of government documents. Users can query every document in the database for any name, date, word, or phrase. Searches can also be focused according to document type, issue date, source institution, classification level, date declassified, sanitization, completeness, number of pages, and document number.

You can access DDRS by clicking here.

Written by Nathaniel King

Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Tips for students

Where are all the books?

September 10, 2008 libraryhacks

The “Find Books” link on the library homepage gives the call numbers and locations for print items in Perkins/Bostock.

Here are the most common call numbers with their corresponding location:

Call number	Location
A – JK	Perkins Lower Floor 2 ( map )
JL – PZ	Perkins 4 ( map )
Q – QR	Bostock 4 ( map )
R – Z	Bostock 3 ( map )
Oversize A-Z	Use “Request” link in catalog
000-999	Use “Request” link in catalog
Oversize 300s, 800s, 900s	Use “Request” link in catalog

For other book locations in Perkins/Bostock click here.

If something is not on the shelf, please stop by the Perkins Reference Desk (or IM us); we’ll do our best to track it down for you.

Written by Nathaniel King

Library Hacks, Life in the library, Tips for students

What is The Link?

September 2, 2008 Cynthia Varkey 4 Comments

If you have been wandering around the Lower Level Perkins and see shocks of bright orange and magenta walls, you have found the Link! The new teaching and learning facility “links” flexible teaching spaces, technology services, and learning tools for the entire Duke campus as a collaborative effort between OIT, Duke University Libraries and Arts & Sciences.

The Link contains 6 classrooms, 4 seminar rooms and 11 group study rooms, as well as informal spaces for collaboration or individual work. It is open and available when Perkins is open. Spaces for classroom use are made through the Registrar’s office. Rooms not reserved for a class are open for both faculty and students on a first come, first served basis. The Link also has a Service Desk that has walk up technical assistance and serves as the distribution point for equipment available from the Duke Digital Initiative.

Besides new classrooms and equipment, the Link has new seating, study spaces, and even *gasp* windows in the lower level. Unlike the furniture in the Library, Link furniture is very flexible and intended to be moved around for your needs. Check out the new funky chairs or drag your study group (and even a rolling whiteboard) into one of the new nooks of the Link.

Link web site

Written by Cynthia Varkey

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

Evernote

August 22, 2008 libraryhacks 2 Comments

Wish you had a photographic memory? Me too, but since that’s not an option, I use Evernote. Never heard of it? Let me fill you in.

In a nutshell: Evernote is an application that allows you to collect information as you encounter it. What do I mean?

Viewing a website or an email and want to remember a certain passage or image? Just highlight it and copy it to Evernote. Looking through a friend’s class notes and see something you missed? Take a picture of it and upload it to Evernote. The same goes for whiteboards, business cards, fliers, and more! Text within images that you copy to Evernote are completely searchable. Even photos of handwritten notes! Glued to your QWERTY board? Use the phone application to send ideas, to-do lists or other reminders as they come up.

The best part (besides the fact that it’s free!) is that there is a web-based version, so you’re not tied to your desktop. Search your information from your laptop in the Perk or on your web-ready cell phone.

What else? Keep your information private or share it with your friends. Add tags or notes to make your images and entries more searchable or sortable. Want to browse by dates? You can do that too. For some additional bells and whistles, use the Windows or Mac application too (don’t worry, it syncs with the web version).

Written by Tiffany Lopez

Exhibits, Library Hacks, Life in the library

New exhibits in Perkins Library

August 12, 2008 Paolo Mangiafico

If you’ve walked through the lobby of Perkins Library in the past few days you’ve surely noticed the beautiful new exhibit cases that were installed there last week. The other morning on my way in I saw Mary Walter, the Assistant Director of Development for the library, taking photos of the new cases and the shimmering reflections from the lights above them. It reminded me a little bit of the Georges Rousse Bending Space project in downtown Durham a couple of years ago, and I asked Mary if I could post a photo here (see one of them here on the right).

The new exhibit cases are now full, with materials from an exhibit titled Pivotal Books / Personal Reflections, which explores the personal nature of books and the relationships that exist between reader and written word. We hope you’ll visit the exhibit in the lobby, and also the exhibit web site, where we invite you to submit your own reflections on books that were pivotal to you and see what other visitors to the exhibit have already sent in.

Just around the corner from the Perkins lobby, in the hallway between the Rare Book Room and the Special Collections Reading Room, is another new exhibit, featuring photographs by Olive Pierce, documenting life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Maine fishing communities, and Iraq. This exhibit will be up through December 2008.

Both of these exhibits, as well as other library exhibits from the past, are available on the exhibits page on library web site.

Cool tools, Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Life in the library, Tips for students

Keep tabs on your laptop with tracking software

August 6, 2008 Emily Daly

It’s so tempting to leave your books and laptop in your favorite study spot while you head to the bathroom or to The Perk for a refill. Unfortunately, it only takes seconds for that precious laptop — along with the months’ worth of work saved to its hard drive — to vanish.

In response to what has become a problem on campuses nation-wide, a group of professors and grad students from the University of Washington, the University of California-San Diego and the University of California-Davis has developed Adeona, a free open-source program that can help users locate lost or stolen laptops.

One particular advantage of Adeona (named for the Roman goddess of safe returns) is that only owners have the ability to track their laptops — users aren’t required to report their information to a third party. In fact, Adeona’s website boasts that it is “the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service.”

Take a few minutes to download and install Adeona, and post your thoughts on the new software here.

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks

What is beta anyway?

July 30, 2008 Catherine Shreve

You might have noticed that our new catalog interface says (beta) on the tab. Now if we were Douglas Adams we could be referring to the fish pictured here: beta fish

But no, in this galaxy, we are referring to something not quite as beautiful and complete–a pilot version of the catalog interface. The interface is still in the process of development, with some features remaining to be implemented (and some pretty cool features like faceted browsing and linking to other Triangle libraries already there).

The good news for users is that “beta” means that we (the library) are receptive to making changes more nimbly with this interface than in other established ones. And unlike the beta fish, of which it’s said: “It is important not to feed your Beta fish too much live food as it has been known to cause problems,”

we encourage as much live input as possible. Once you are in the new catalog, just click the Feedback link at the top right. Or go directly to: http://library.duke.edu/research/help/catalog/feedback.html

So go ahead and feed the beta fish! Throw that constructive criticism at us and help us make it beautiful! We want to hear from students, faculty, and other researchers as well as library staff so that we can make it work best for all of the users in our library galaxy.

picture and quote from www.betafacts.com

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks, Tips for students

Items ‘Being Repaired’ in New Catalog

July 24, 2008 Jean Ferguson

In our new catalog, there are books and other items which show as Being Repaired, like this one:

Items that are Being Repaired can be requested. Whether they are at the shop getting a new binding or up in one of the levels waiting to be processed, you can click on the title of the item to see more information.

When you get to the next screen, also called the Full Record, you will see a button in the top right part of the screen that says ‘Get this title’.

Click on this button to get to the Classic Catalog. There will be more information about the location of this item and often a Request link. Click on the Request link and fill in your NetID and password to let us know that we need to try to find this for you.

Some items may not have a Request link. In this case, stop by our Reference or Circulation Desk (or email us at askref@duke.edu) and we will investigate the best method to find it for you.

Catalog Tip, Cool tools, Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

RSS & the Library Catalog: Why & How

July 18, 2008 Sean Aery

Last week, Duke Libraries launched a brand new interface to its catalog. There’s a lot that you can do with the new catalog that you couldn’t do before, so get ready for many new tips and tricks here on Library Hacks.

This post will focus on using RSS (really simple syndication). RSS “feeds” free you from having to constantly check web sites to see if anything new and interesting has been added. Instead, the information is delivered to you as soon as it is available. If you’re not familiar with RSS or would like a refresher, take a few minutes to watch this “RSS in Plain English” video by CommonCraft:

Of course, the library catalog is neither news nor a blog. So, you might ask, what can you do with RSS in the library catalog? You can…

Get alerted when items of interest to you are added to the catalog

Let’s look at some examples of items. I’ll use the first to demonstrate.
(Bookmarked with the “Save Search” feature):

Whether you are just browsing by clicking around or you have narrowed a set of results with a combination of search terms and selections from the left-hand “Refine Your Search” menu, you’ll see an RSS icon ( ) next to the number of results found.

Right-Click (or Option-Click) on the RSS icon to copy the feed URL. Click Copy Shortcut (or its equivalent–see below).

We have to add that feed URL to an RSS reader (also called an aggregator). I use Google Reader, so I’ll demonstrate with that. Feel free to substitute your aggregator of choice, or use your browser’s built-in feed subscription feature.

In Google Reader, click “Add subscription,” paste in the feed URL you copied from the catalog, and click “Add”.

Now that you have subscribed, any time an item is added to the catalog that matches what you were looking for (in this case, feature film DVDs at Lilly Library) the item will appear in your reader, just like new blog posts and news articles, with a link that will take you to the item in the catalog interface.

This is a great way to find out quickly and effortlessly about new additions to the catalog that match your interests.

Other uses of RSS feeds from the Catalog

Beyond delivering notices to your personal reader, you can use a feed from the catalog to generate a linked list of new additions that match a particular interest, and embed that in another web site. You could add a list to a blog, your Facebook profile, a course or departmental web site, or someplace else. The steps to do this will differ depending on which site, widget, or application you’re using, but use the same technique as above to get the feed URL.

RSS at Duke University Libraries

There are many other RSS feeds from Duke Libraries beyond the catalog. Subscribe to get library news, see job postings, or to read posts from Library Hacks or one of our several other blogs:
http://library.duke.edu/rss/index.html

Related resources

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks

New Catalog Interface

July 9, 2008 Debra Kurtz 3 Comments

The Library has published a new interface to the catalog that performs faster and is easier to navigate thanks to a faceted browsing feature similar to those found on retail sites such as Amazon and Home Depot.

Things to keep in mind:

When you search the form in the “Search Our Resources” box results will display in the new catalog interface with the exception of GoogleScholar and E-Journals. The latter will continue to load in the (old interface) Resource Finder due to system limitations.
All links to library.duke.edu/catalog will be redirected to the new catalog interface but catalog.library.duke.edu will continue to display the classic search screen.
There will be links to the Classic Catalog from new catalog interface and from the Libraries’ homepage.
There will be a link from new catalog interface to a comments/suggestions form by the end of the week.

A feedback form will be linked to from the new interface by the end of the week. Try it out now (find.library.duke.edu) and let us know what you think.

Citing Sources, Cool tools, Library Hacks

Make citations in Facebook

June 27, 2008 libraryhacks

In further Facebook takes over the universe (at least the parts not already claimed by Google) news, there’s a new application in Facebook called CiteMe. You enter the title of the book you want to cite, click go, and the app spits out a formatted citation in one of five styles (APA, Chicago, Harvard. MLA, or Turabian).

It uses the WorldCat library catalog to find books, so it won’t be helpful for citing journal articles. If you’re working with journal articles, you can check our Citing Sources pages for examples and do them by hand, or get started with RefWorks or EndNote, the two citation managers Duke has site licenses for, or Zotero, a free online citation manager. Lots of choices, but CiteMe is a nice little addition to the mix!

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Database Tip, Library Hacks, Question of the Week

How do I get access to NetLibrary e-books?

June 20, 2008 libraryhacks

Most of Duke’s e-books are provided by a service called NetLibrary. The 24,000+ e-books can be viewed at the site but not downloaded, and printing is cumbersome.

You can go directly to NetLibrary and search for e-books, or find them in our catalog and click on the link into NetLibrary. Once at the NetLibrary site, you need to create a free log-in and password to access a book. You can then “check out” the book, usually for 4 hours, unless someone else is using it.

If you are off campus you will need to make sure that NetLibrary is recognizing you as a Duke user. Look for the little Duke window at the top left of the page. If it’s not there, you will need to turn on the Duke VPN if you use it, or force our EZProxy server to ask you for a Duke NetID and password. To do this, go back to the library home page and search for NetLibrary using the Databases tab. When you click the link in the results, you should get a pop-up asking for your NetID and password.

(You can also force EZProxy by right-clicking on the page and following the link when you are using the LibX plugin. Just another reason that LibX is so great!)

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Library Hacks, Life in the library

Duke Libraries on Film!

June 18, 2008 libraryhacks 1 Comment

I’m late to the party on this, but I recently learned that the winning film in Duke’s 2008 Froshlife first-year movie festival, Wilson’s Making the Grade, features both Lilly and Perkins Libraries. Lilly and its opinionated e-printer make an appearance at about 2:10, and Perkins and the Gothic Reading Room show up at 6:20.

Know any other appearances of the Duke Libraries on film?

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Citing Sources, Cool tools, Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Research Help

RefWorks is here!

June 13, 2008 Emily Daly 1 Comment

Some of you avid fans of RefWorks will be happy to hear that you may now access this online research management system FREE through Duke’s OIT.

For those of you who haven’t yet been wowed by RefWorks’ user-friendly interface and robust functionality (think Works Cited pages in seconds; in-text citations in a couple of clicks; unlimited storage space for citations and notes), take a few minutes to create a free account:

Go to www.refworks.com/refworks from any computer on campus
Click on Sign Up for an Individual Account
Enter your information and click Register

You’ll find that RefWorks is fairly intuitive, but it’s worth taking a look at the Quick Start Guide or the step-by-step RefWorks tutorials when learning how to format bibliographies and import citations from databases to your account.

And if you’re off-campus, never fear: Just enter Duke’s group code RWDukeUniv.

Questions about RefWorks? Contact Emily Daly. And let us know your thoughts about Duke’s latest time-saving tool for researchers!

Cool tools, Library Hacks

Academic uses for Twitter?

June 10, 2008 libraryhacks 5 Comments

A lot of the technoscenti have become coverts to Twitter in the last six months. Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows you to post 140-character snippets (via text message, web or other media) and have them read at the site, fed into your Facebook status page, or delivered in a variety of other ways. I know an office that uses Twitter instead of an old-fashioned in/out board, and Twitter got a lot of press as a result of the “revolt” at the SXSW Keynote Address.

But is Twitter relevant to academic work? I didn’t think so until I read Lenore’s blog post about using Twitter at a blogger’s meetup, and her musings:

Despite the high quality of both the planned and unplanned sessions, the best part, by far, was meeting other Twitter users. It was a tremendous amount of fun observing and participating in conversations during the actual sessions while also tweeting about what the presenter was trying to convey. …

I was effectively live blogging or taking notes on what I considered to be the main points of each session and others who were attending the conference or following along from a remote location, could see them using twemes.com or hashtags.org.

And then I found a series of posts at AcademHack discussing using Twitter in the classroom. This is from the faculty perspective – but certainly a study group of students could work together to take collaborative notes in a lecture using hashtags. What do you think, faculty, and students?

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks, Question of the Week

What does “In process-LC” mean?

June 5, 2008 libraryhacks

Duke libraries recently moved from Dewey-Decimal to the Library of Congress (LC) classification system. “In process-LC” generally means that an item has gotten stuck in the reclassification process, and won’t be found in the regular stacks.

Since the item might be located in a number of places, the easiest thing to do is request its delivery. Here’s what you do:

Click on the catalog “Request” link for the item

An email will be sent to you when it is available for pick-up at the Circulation desk

Now you can get on with your research!

Written by Kathi Matsura

Library Hacks, Life in the library

Summer at Perkins: Floors Open, Books Move!

June 3, 2008 libraryhacks

This summer, the second, third and fourth floors of Perkins are re-opening as public spaces, with book stacks, carrels, group study rooms, and more. Perkins 2 is already open, now housing the Public Documents and Maps collection. The just-vacated shelves on Bostock 3 are being filled with books from Bostock 4 and the Vesic Library, which is moving into Perkins/Bostock this month. (Need to access Vesic materials during the transition? Email vesic-requests@duke.edu for expert help.)

As the other floors open later in the summer, we will see materials move out of temporary quarters in the Perkins Levels; other books will spread out from the over-full shelves in Perkins Lower Level 2.

To keep up-to-date on the locations of call numbers, always consult our Book Locations for Perkins/Bostock, and if you have any trouble finding things, Ask a Librarian for help.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Library Hacks, Question of the Week, Tips for students

Can I request a book that is already checked-out?

May 29, 2008 libraryhacks 1 Comment

Yes. You can use the catalog “Request” link in order to have a checked out book returned and held for you.

Here’s how it works:

If the item has been checked out for at least two weeks, it will automatically be recalled for you (each borrower is guaranteed two weeks)

Once an item has been returned to the pickup library, you will be sent an email notification and it will be held for 10 days

All patrons are eligible to request a hold on materials currently checked out. Only Duke students, faculty and staff and TRLN patrons are eligible for recall privileges.

More details and screen-shots on Recalls and Holds can also be found on our website.

Written by Kathi Matsura

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks, Question of the Week, Tips for students

What is the LSC?

May 22, 2008 libraryhacks

The Library Service Center (LSC) is an off-site storage facility where materials are kept at optimal environment levels to help ensure their longevity. An item located at the LSC can be retrieved when requested, but there are slightly different procedures for Duke patrons and guests:

Duke community:

Click on the “Request” link in the library catalog
After entering your Net ID/password, indicate a library location for delivery
An email will be sent to you when the requested materials arrive at the library

Guests:

If you don’t have a Net ID/password, please use the Guest Request Form for LSC Materials

Helpful screen shots and detailed instructions can also be found here.

Written by Kathi Matsura

Catalog Tip, Cool tools, Library Hacks

LibX updated – bug fixes and new search options

May 16, 2008 Paolo Mangiafico 1 Comment

If you’re a user of the Duke LibX browser plugin for Firefox, you should soon be getting prompted by Firefox to update the plugin. If you want it right away, go to the Tools / Add-ons menu and click “Find Updates” in the Extensions tab.

The new version is 1.2.8, and includes a couple of changes.

One is that the embedded “cues” stopped working in Amazon pages a while back, and this new version applies a fix that makes them work again. When you’re viewing a book page in Amazon, you should see the Duke Library icon next to the book’s title (looks like this: Reading Blue Devil icon – it’s a silhouette of the Reading Blue Devil weathervane on top of the von der Heyden Pavilion). If you click on the icon, it will start a search in the Duke Library Catalog to see if Duke has the book for you to check out.

The other change is the addition of the option to search the new Search TRLN system via the LibX browser bar and right-click menu. The menu item (labeled “Search Triangle Research Libraries”) will search the catalogs of Duke, NCCU, NCSU, and UNC-CH and show you results from all for universities. There’s more information on Search TRLN in this earlier post.

And you can read more about all of the other things LibX can do in this earlier post about Duke LibX or on the Duke LibX download page.

If you’re a Duke LibX user, please tell us in the comments section what you like or don’t like about it, and if there are things you’d like to see changed added to it. If you’re not already using it, try it out!

Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Question of the Week

Can a book be delivered to another library?

May 16, 2008 libraryhacks

You are referring to a system called BARD (Book/Article Delivery) which is available to Duke faculty and Duke graduate students. It allows you to request books and articles for delivery and pick-up from one Duke library to another Duke library location.

A great page with screen shots and instructions is linked above, or you can just follow these easy directions:

Find the item in the library catalog
Click on the item’s call number
Click on the “Request” link on the far right side of the screen
Fill in the requested information

Written by Kathi Matsura

Citing Sources, Cool tools, Library Hacks

Connotea — another look

May 13, 2008 Catherine Shreve 3 Comments

In Ted’s recent comments on connotea, he said he enjoyed it, but found that connotea was not such a great citation manager; it doesn’t always gather the metadata needed. On the connotea site, it explains that it is “specially designed for scientists and clinicians,” so it gathers bibliographic data better for some sites than others.

I agree, connotea is no substitute for a bibliographic reference manager like Endnote (to which Duke subscribes) or Refworks. I also agree that it’s “downright fun!” As a librarian, I use it as an academic networking tool, to find, track and tag resources as I come across them. It’s very handy for retrieving items on a particular topic, and for creating feeds for specific classes–I tag resources with the course name.

Ted was also concerned about messy tags. The “related tags” on the right belong to other users, who may create them however they’d like.

That’s both the beauty and the chaos of a Web 2.0 tool–everyone gets to play, and you can follow their leads, or not.

So, the short answer is: the value of connotea depends on your purpose. For a free web-based citation manager, you might like to try zotero (from an earlier LibraryHacks post):

The open-source Zotero (part 1 / part 2) is [a] Firefox extension that allows you to store, retrieve and organize your reference sources for a more streamlined citation process.

Has anyone out there done more than a first foray into zotero? Please send us your comments.

Citing Sources, Cool tools, Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Research Help

Save time! Learn EndNote!

May 13, 2008 Emily Daly

Start your summer research with a bang by learning to use EndNote, a reference management tool that is sure to save you time and frustration. Duke faculty, students and staff may download EndNote to personal or work computers, free of charge.

Perkins Library is offering a free introductory EndNote session on Tuesday, May 27 from 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM in Bostock Library, Room 023. We’ll provide an orientation to the software, show you how to set up your personal EndNote library and then teach you to format a bibliography in a couple of keystrokes.

Interested? Register today! And stay tuned for more Intro and Advanced EndNote sessions this summer!

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks

Search TRLN: Facets for Refining Searches

May 12, 2008 libraryhacks

We have already highlighted a couple of features of the Search TRLN Catalog, which allows users to search the combined library catalogs of Duke, UNC, NCCU and NCSU. If you missed them, see our posts on spelling correction and quotes.

Probably Search TRLN’s most innovative and powerful feature is that is it a “faceted browser” interface. After you perform an initial keyword search, you can narrow your result set by choosing one or more ‘facets’ from the menu on the left side of the screen.

Here’s an example. I am interested in Pylos, a Bronze Age archaeological site in Greece, which was also the site of a famous Classical Greek naval battle, and is today a small city that occasionally hosts academic symposia.

A keyword search for “pylos” pulls up books relevant to all of the above, but I am particularly interested in the Linear B tablets from Pylos, so I click the relevant facet under Subject:

Many of the hits are in languages I don’t read, so I open the Language facet to narrow my search to only items in English:

Search TRLN keeps track of the facets I have chosen, and I can broaden my search again by clicking the x to stop using one of the facets:

Other facets available include format (book, dissertation, map…), location (at Duke?), author, year of publication, and call number range. Happy faceting!

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Library Hacks, Question of the Week

What are the library hours?

May 7, 2008 libraryhacks

Library hours can sometimes vary on weekends, holidays and summer.

Perkins/Bostock and other Duke libraries hours are linked from the homepage banner (just below the website search bar).

Hope to see you soon!

Written by Kathi Matsura

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks

Search TRLN Tip 2: Quotes!

May 6, 2008 libraryhacks

Another great new feature of the Search TRLN interface for searching across the Duke, NCCU, NCSU and UNC libraries is that you can use quotation marks in the search box.

Quotes are a great tool when you know the item you want and are trying to find it. Sometimes a Keyword or Title Keyword search returns irrelevant hits – though honestly, the Search TRLN algorithm is really good: in my experimenting, I found that usually the title I want is on the first page of hits. If you have trouble finding your title, putting quotation marks around it will usually help the item you want rise to the top of the results list.

You can also use quotes to link together keywords into a phrase. Instead of searching for ‘social activism’, which gets you 1746 results, try ‘”social activism”‘, which results in only 164 hits – much easier to browse through.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Library Hacks, Question of the Week, Tips for students

What happens when an item is overdue?

April 30, 2008 libraryhacks 2 Comments

Before heading home for the summer, you may want to check whether you have any books out on loan… and when they’re due. Here’s how to find out:

Click on “My Account” on the library homepage searchbox

Enter your Net ID/password

The number next to “Loans” will indicate the number of items you have out. Click on the link for the full details.

Once an item is overdue, you should receive an email. Charges can vary depending on the type of material (book, laptop, video) and the lending library. Here are some quick links:

Perkins/Bostock Library fines

Lilly Library fines

Ford Library fines

Law Library fines

Medical Center Library fines

Written by Kathi Matsura

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks, Question of the Week, Tips for students

What if the article I need isn’t full-text online?

April 22, 2008 libraryhacks

Unfortunately, not all databases or online searches will lead to full-text articles, but there is always a chance that we have a print copy of the journal. In order to check whether the library has copies of the journal, check the online catalog:

You can either search by “Journal title keywords” or “Title begins with…” from the library homepage search box

Be sure to type the name of the journal in the search box (not the article title)

We also maintain a handy guide of helpful tips and instructions for finding journals. If you’ve ever been confused about journal abbreviations or how to find journals on your topic – it’s a great place to look!

Written by Kathi Matsura

Cool tools, Library Hacks

CIT Showcase Features Research Tips & Tools

April 21, 2008 libraryhacks

This year’s annual Instructional Technology Showcase, on April 24 in the Bryan Center, features a number of presentations about using technology tools in teaching. Come hear about:

Duke Digital Initiative 2008-2009
Tips and Tricks for Incorporating Web 2.0 in Your Class
Duke’s New Teaching and Learning Spaces
Second Life in Undergraduate Education at Duke
New Tools for Library Research and Teaching
Google Earth for Teaching and Learning

Of special interest to readers of the Library Hacks blog will be the 10:20 am program on New Tools for Library Research and Teaching, facilitated by Tom Crichlow. We’ll be highlighting some of the tools on the library’s Research Tools page, with tips on how to make them work for your needs, and will be fielding audience questions.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Library Hacks, Question of the Week, Tips for students

What should I do if the book isn’t on the shelf?

April 14, 2008 libraryhacks

Yes… I guess it’s happened to all of us. You make a trip all the way to the library, and then realize that the book you want is nowhere to be found.

Before leaving in frustration, try one of these steps:

Look around the surrounding shelves a bit. It’s possible that the book was inadvertently misplaced. Nearby copy machines and tables are also possible spots to quickly look.

Check the catalog record again, and make sure that both the call number and location are correct. Bound journals, for example, are not shelved with the other books, and you might be looking in the wrong area (maybe even the wrong library). Here’s a quick glance at our book location chart.

When double-checking the catalog record, make sure that the book hasn’t already been checked out. Take a look at the “Library (Owned/Out)” column in the catalog record. The first number indicates how many copies the library owns, and the second number will let you know how many are checked out. If all the books are available, the second number should read “0”.

Is the book still missing? Try checking the re-shelving area in Perkins. Before going back to the shelves, the books are organized in a room behind the circulation area – Level A. Follow the pathway with the library lockers, e-print stations and copy machines. The re-shelving area is the first door on the left.

Finally, you can request a search for the book. Submit this missing book form electronically, and library staff will try to locate the book for you. This request form includes both Perkins and Lilly (plus a few other branch libraries). You would be contacted by email regarding the status of the book. If the book is found, it will be held for you. Otherwise, an inter-library loan might be suggested.

Additional information about the shelf maintenance at Perkins Library can be found here.

Written by Kathi Matsura

Catalog Tip, Cool tools, Database Tip, Library Hacks

iGoogle and Duke Libraries

April 10, 2008 libraryhacks

We’ve heard of several faculty and library staff members who are converts to iGoogle, which is sort of a customizable universal home page. If you use iGoogle and the Duke Libraries, you should certainly add our Google Gadget, which lets you put the tabbed search box from the library home page right into iGoogle. Here’s how it looks:

You’ll notice that Catherine also has her Gmail account, Facebook account, Google Reader (for subscribing to blogs, like Duke’s Library Hacks!), Google Docs, and a news feed (plus other stuff you can’t see like weather and Youtube) all feeding in to her iGoogle page.

You can also create your own free-form “gadget” with links to, for example, e-journals or databases that you search all the time, creating a series of research shortcuts for yourself. Give the Duke Library Google Gadget a try and see if other iGoogle tools work for you. If you have a library or research-related iGoogle Hack, leave us a note in comments!

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Cool tools, Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

Save time! Learn EndNote!

April 9, 2008 Emily Daly 1 Comment

Jump start your research and writing by using EndNote, a reference management tool that is sure to save you time and frustration. Duke faculty, students and staff may download EndNote to personal or work computers, free of charge.

Perkins Library is offering four free EndNote sessions:

Wed, Apr 9 from 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM in Lilly Library Training Room (EndNote Advanced–Scieces/Social Sciences)
Mon, Apr 14 from 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM in Lilly Library Training Room (Introduction to EndNote)
Tue, Apr 15 from 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM in Bostock Library, Room 023 (EndNote Advanced)
Thu, Apr 17 from 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM in Bostock Library, Room 023 (Introduction to EndNote)

Interested? Register today — space is limited!

Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Original research

Want $1000?

April 4, 2008 Emily Daly 1 Comment

Want $1000?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cool tools, Library Hacks, Life in the library

Find an Open Computer

April 4, 2008 libraryhacks 1 Comment

As the semester gets endy and the library gets FULL, remember we have a handy online system that allows you to see where there are unused computers in Perkins, Bostock, Vesic, Music, and Lilly.

Another school (Georgia Tech) set up a system like this, and a student cartoonist in their paper replied with the following:

If you are uncomfortable asking someone to give up a computer even though she is hanging out on Facebook and you really need the statistical software because your paper is due at 5pm, ask a librarian at the desk. We can find you an open computer or help remind others that people using the library computers for academic work should have priority.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks

Search TRLN Feature 1: Spelling Correction

April 2, 2008 libraryhacks 1 Comment

Search TRLN (introduced here) has some great features that make the search experience more like familiar online searches (cough*google*cough) than like more traditional library catalogs.

Search TRLN will try to suggest corrections for your spelling errors or typos. I did an Author search on “milosAvic”, deliberately, but plausibly, spelling this name wrong. Search TRLN realized I might have meant “milosEvic” and included search results for that spelling in my list. As it turns out, the first 5 items in the list have authors named Milosevic associated with them. Nice!

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Library Hacks, Life in the library

Iron Maiden in the library

March 27, 2008 Paolo Mangiafico

No, not this kind of iron maiden. The other kind.

Last night about 50 students took a study break and came down to the computer classroom in the basement of Bostock Library to play video games. If was the first of what we hope will become a series of game nights in the library.

Our friends in ISIS and the Dean of Students Office brought over a couple of XBox 360 consoles, a Wii, a Playstation2, and a Playstation3, along with some high end desktop computers for gaming. Most importantly, though, they also brought a complete set of instruments for the game Rock Band. We rearranged some of the tables in the classroom, projected the game consoles onto big screens, turned up the volume, and transformed the room into a concert hall and gaming room for one night.

Students “rocked the ‘stock” for about 3 hours to the tunes of Iron Maiden, R.E.M., Soundgarden, Boston, Bang Camaro, and more. Others played Halo3, FIFA 06, Atari Anthology, Brawl, Wii Sports, and other video games, while snacking on pizza and soft drinks courtesy of the game night’s three sponsors, the ISIS Program, Duke Libraries, and the Dean of Students Office.

Check out these photo sets in Flickr and a set of short videos in YouTube for a better taste of the evening.

Game Night!! – Flickr photoset
Game night at the library – Flickr photoset
More game night photos – Flickr photoset
Game night at Bostock Library – YouTube videos

We hope you’ll come out and join the fun too next time…

Catalog Tip, Cool tools, Library Hacks

Search TRLN: unified catalog for Duke, UNC, NCSU and NCCU

March 25, 2008 libraryhacks 3 Comments

Did you know that these local universities have cooperative agreements between their libraries ? Duke students, faculty and staff can use their Duke ID cards to check out books at UNC, NC State, or NCCU, and vice versa, for example.

Now TRLN (the Triangle Research Libraries Network) has launched a new catalog that has a unified search for the collections of all the schools’ libraries. You can request delivery between the schools, which is expected to take 48 hours.

Search TRLN has a number of exciting new features:

It still has the support you’re used to:

We’ll be posting some more detailed suggestions and web tutorials for how best to use this new catalog in the coming weeks. Right now, give it a try! Leave a question or a tip in comments.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Database Tip, Duke researchers, Library Hacks, Question of the Week

How do I access databases from off-campus?

March 21, 2008 libraryhacks 1 Comment

To get to databases or e-journals from off-campus, be sure to go through the library website in order to be recognized as a Duke user. Going directly to a bookmarked e-resource will not work.

Try logging in using any one of these methods:

Start at the database or e-journal interface, or follow a “GetIt@Duke” link. When you click on a link, a new window will pop up, and you just need to fill in your NetID and password to connect to EZProxy. You should be good to go until you end your browser session or log out!

When entering the library website from off-campus, you might also notice that there is a Yellow box located to the right of the titled database link(s) saying “Your web browser is reporting an IP address that is not within range of authorized AP addresses”. Just click on the link for signing in with your Net ID/password. Once you’re signed in, you can access any number of databases.

If you’re still not being recognized as a Duke user, download and install the Duke Virtual Private Network (VPN). Some resources exclusive to Law, Business, or Medical Center affiliates cannot be accessed via EZProxy. Make sure that the the VPN is open when you access the database or e-journal.

If you’re having any trouble Ask a Librarian, or check through some of the connection issues that might cause difficulties with the VPN.

Written by Kathi Matsura

Library Hacks, Life in the library, Tips for students

Watch Your Laptop

March 18, 2008 libraryhacks

Yesterday there were two laptop thefts reported in Perkins-Bostock in the course of the morning. The police officer who responded walked around the building and noted that he could have taken three more laptops that he saw unattended. Please do not leave your laptop alone, even if you just plan to run to the Perk or to the stacks for 2 minutes!

Laptop thefts are a financial blow to students, but they often cause academic harm as well. Many students do not regularly back up their files, so the loss of a laptop can mean the loss of projects and papers you haven’t turned in yet.

Sometimes it feels like we’ve seen it all at the Reference Desk (there was the squirrel living in a trash can on Perkins 4 one spring), but we never get used to the heartbreak of seeing students who have lost significant work. I’d estimate that laptop theft is the number 2 cause of loss of student work; the number one cause we see is saving to the desktop of a public computer, then getting logged out (which wipes the desktop of all files). Take the time to back up your files, and keep your belongings with you. It’s worth it.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Citing Sources, Library Hacks, Question of the Week, Research Help, Tips for students

How do I cite sources?

March 14, 2008 libraryhacks 4 Comments

There is a citation help guide available through the library website.

The section on the left explains how to cite sources within your paper. The section on the right explains how to compile a list of references at the end of your paper. Styles covered in this guide include: MLA, APA, Turabian, Chicago, and CSE. If this source does not include what you are looking for – try a Google search. Many libraries create similar citation guides, and one of them just might have what you need. Complete style manuals can also be borrowed from the library. Check the online catalog for availability.

For keeping track of citations and managing your references, be sure to consider some of the bibliographic software options available to Duke students:

EndNote, for example, will import references into a document as you write, and papers can be automatically formatted according to many different bibliographic styles.

The open-source Zotero (part 1 / part 2) is also an exciting new Firefox extension that allows you to store, retrieve and organize your reference sources for a more streamlined citation process.

Any of these can be fabulous time-saving options, and worth taking the effort to learn and explore!

Written by Kathi Matsura

Catalog Tip, Cool tools, Database Tip, Library Hacks, Tips for students

Search Duke Library Resources from Facebook

March 14, 2008 libraryhacks

Hang out in Facebook a lot? Do you think you might want to search the Duke library catalog and other library databases directly from there some times? You can now using the Duke Libraries Facebook application.

To install it, go to http://apps.facebook.com/dukelibraries/ and follow the usual method for installing Facebook applications, checking or unchecking the settings you want for this application. Then look for it on your profile page. The box should be able to be moved around on your page and fit in either column. With this app, you should be able to do any of the searches that you can do on the library home page.

Try it out, and let us know what you think!

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks

Spring Break Beach Reading?

March 6, 2008 libraryhacks 1 Comment

Literature Librarian Sara Seten Berghausen says:

Need some spring break reading? Browse the Perkins New & Noteworthy Collection or check the Current Literature shelves at Lilly Library. These web sites offer ideas for a good read.

Click here to search in the catalog for books in the New & Noteworthy and Current Literature Collections.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Library Hacks, Life in the library, Research Help, Tips for students

Working over Spring Break? We are.

March 6, 2008 libraryhacks

For those of you who are working hard instead of (or in addition to) playing hard this spring break, here are some tips for using the library remotely:

You have automatic access to all the library’s article databases and other resources while you are home (or in Myrtle Beach.) Use the “database search” box on the library home page to find the resource you need, and when you click through to it you will be prompted for your NetID and password. More information on remote access is here.

We’re here for questions via email, IM, and phone. We’ll be keeping short hours during the week, but if you email overnight we’ll get back to you first thing in the morning.

For those staying in town, come on by! We’re only open days, but we’d love to see you.

(Photo of Myrtle Beach taken by Curtis and Eric, found at Flickr, and used under a Creative Commons license.)

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Library Hacks, Question of the Week

The shelves in Perkins LL2 are stuck. What do I do?

February 29, 2008 libraryhacks

Check whether a footstool or any other object (sleeping student?) is obstructing one of the aisles

Press the reset button

If that doesn’t help, either IM a Librarian or call the Circulation desk at (919) 660-5870 to let us know which shelf is stuck (we’ll need the call number area). A phone is located on the wall near the shelf labeled AC to AG by the rear elevator. Someone will be sent down with a key.

Written by Kathi Matsura

Library Hacks, Life in the library

More Study Seating in Perkins-Bostock

February 28, 2008 libraryhacks

In response to student requests, we are adding temporary tables and chairs to provide more seating for study on the first floors of Perkins and Bostock. As midterms are upon us and spring semester starts to rush to its end, we know that demand is at its greatest.

Can’t find a seat in the Carpenter Reading Room or The Perk at the Pavilion? Try one of these more out-of-the-way study spots:

Lower Level 2 Perkin

Lower Level 1

Bostock 4

The Old Perk

Tower Room 201

When the upper floors of Perkins open this coming summer, there will be an increase in study seating and group study rooms. If you’ll be here next fall, come by and stretch out.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks, Tips for students

Documentary Films for Research

February 26, 2008 libraryhacks 2 Comments

Documentary films can be a great resource for academic work, and Duke is a great place to find documentaries. The Center for Documentary Studies offers undergraduate classes, workshops, and public programs and events; Lilly Library has an excellent film collection including many documentaries; and Durham is home to the world-famous Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

DocumentaryFilms.net has a useful directory of documentaries by broad categories like Biography and Nature and Wildlife, and includes a search box. You can also search for documentaries, and often find free streaming video of the trailer or even the entire film, at YouTube or Google Video.

This is a trailer for Born Into Brothels, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Film. Duke has this film at Lilly Library; it’s DVD 5317.

You can search the library’s online catalog for films relevant to your research using the search tips provided by Lilly. While most films are in the Lilly collection, we have government videos, medical training videos, and other valuable items in libraries across campus. Lilly has stations where you can watch video cassettes, and most DVDs can be checked out.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Library Hacks, Question of the Week, Tips for students

Where are the books?

February 22, 2008 libraryhacks

I guess you have the Call Number and Title, but now you’re wondering where to go? Given the ongoing construction at Perkins, this is a very common question – and fortunately easy to answer!

* For Perkins/Bostock Libraries:

Most books are located either on Perkins Lower Level 2 or Bostock 4
Some exceptions include: current periodicals or newspapers, microfiche, East Asian collection, Reference sources and government documents. Locations are indicated in the “Find Books” link near the center of the homepage (under the How Do I… heading)

* For materials at the Library Service Center:

Use the GetIt@Duke “Request” link for retrieval and delivery to a library location convenient to you. Email notification will be sent when it arrives.

* For “In-Process LC” books:

These sources can still be retrieved with the GetIt@Duke “Request” link, and an email will be sent to you when it is available for pick-up.
These materials have Dewey call numbers (notice they begin with numbers- not letters), and haven’t completed reclassification into the Library of Congress (LC) system.

* For materials at other libraries:

Includes information for locating books at both Lilly and the Divinity Library

You can also check with the Circulation or Reference desks if you are unable to locate a book on the shelf, or request a search for the missing book.

Written by Kathi Matsura

Citing Sources, Library Hacks

Lectures on Academic Citation

February 19, 2008 libraryhacks 2 Comments

The Citing Sources pages are some of the most popular on the library web site (Google “citing sources” and you’ll know why!).

If you’re addicted to citing sources, or wondering about the deeper relationships between MLA style and scholarly discourse, come to two lectures featuring David Kellogg, the Director of Advanced Writing in the Disciplines at Northeastern University, on Wednesday February 20:

10:15-11:30 ART 116
“Citationality across the Disciplines”
Differences in citation practices across fields reflect different intellectual and rhetorical commitments. Understanding these differences has ramifications for teaching academic writing.

4:15-5:30 Lilly Library Training Room
“Following the Citation Thread: Citation-Based Literature Searching”
Students are traditionally taught to find sources for research projects through keyword or subject searching. But research databases increasingly provide links to cited and citing articles. Compared with keyword or subject searches, citation-based search strategies identify a narrower and more relevant set of sources and more effectively model the practices of
working researchers.

Written by Phoebe Acheson

Catalog Tip, Library Hacks, Question of the Week, Tips for students

How do I look for specific books, journals or movies in the catalog?

February 14, 2008 libraryhacks

It may sound like a lot of questions rolled into one, but the process for locating resources in various formats is fairly consistent.

* Basic Search:

From the library homepage, type the title into the search box under the catalog tab.
Choose “Title begins with” from the drop down menu, and click “Go”. This will search the entire library catalog and retrieve the results.
Because the search included all formats of the title, you may need to scroll a bit to find what you need.

* Advanced Search: (Limiting to specific types of materials)

Click on “Advanced Search” from the library homepage search box.
Under “Format” in the blue box on the right of the screen, select “Film/Video”, “Audio Books” or another type of resource from the drop down menu
Select “Title Keywords” from the drop down menu
Enter Title keywords and click “Go”

*“How Do I…?” Feature Box:

The feature box linked above offers numerous helpful hints and guides when searching for specific types of materials.

Some of the helpful links include searches for books, journals, movies and lots more. Explore it a bit. You might learn a useful thing or two!

Written by Kathi Matsura

Citing Sources, Cool tools, Library Hacks, Tips for students

Introducing Zotero (part 2)

February 13, 2008 libraryhacks

(Since my first post introducing the research tool Zotero, its development continues apace. Several new features have been added, and over 60 institutions, according to the Zotero blog, now recommend Zotero, including MIT and Rice University–both having published their own tutorials on using it.)

In my initial post I promised to explain why I thought Zotero was something worth writing home about, not just yet-another-piece-of-software. In case you’re still wondering if Zotero is worth the hype, I’ll make good on the promise. First, since Zotero is an open-source extension to the Firefox browser, anyone can modify it to support their needs—for example, by adding new citation styles or integration with word processors like OpenOffice.org. Of course, being open-source software, Zotero doesn’t cost a dime, making it an even more attractive alternative to expensive proprietary options like EndNote. Second, Zotero makes use of the evolving Firefox extension platform (also open-source) which will, I think, become ever more useful and functional development platform, as software proliferates that lives in the space between the internet and your computer. Lastly, Zotero is a modest coup for open access. As Zotero not only creates a citation to the material you’re reading in your browser—a journal article from PLOS Biology, for example—but also a copy (Zotero calls it a “snapshot”), when you need to refer or share the material later, you’ll be able to provide not only the citation but also the content itself. No trip back to the database or journal’s website is required (“Research, not re-search” is among Zotero’s mottos). Imagine thousands of researchers making use of this feature and you can imagine how this might constitute a modest push toward faster, easier access to research material for those who need it.

If any of this interests you and you’re not already a user, the Zotero folks have a short video introducing the extention.

Duke researchers, Librarians, Library Hacks, Life in the library

Live @ the RefDesk

February 12, 2008 Catherine Shreve 2 Comments

Today in Perkins we are testing some software for keeping Reference statistics. Why? It’s helpful to plan for staffing–how many questions, from which kinds of patrons, what types of questions (from staplerology to ‘jumpstart my thesis’).

But what I really want to get at is the human element. There is talk of the future irrelevance of a Reference Desk, if not the actual Reference librarians, whose minds presumably will be accessible in other modes and places. Here’s an excerpt from the TAIGA Forum Provocative Statements:

Within the next five years…There will no longer be reference desks or reference offices in the library. Instead, public services staff offices will be located outside the physical library.

Or, to expand on this line of reasoning:

If the truth be known, as a place to get help in finding information, the reference desk was never a good idea. A reference librarian standing behind a desk waiting for someone to say, “I can’t find what I’m looking for; can you help?” might be justifiable if, as is the case with other service professionals, that librarian was the reason the person came to the building to begin with. But reference librarians have not served so central a function. They have stood ready to help “just in case”-just in case navigating the building isn’t clear, just in case the catalog doesn’t produce wanted results, just in case the collections seem not to contain the desired material or information. In short, reference service-in particular point-of-need reference service-has been an afterthought, something to be considered after the building’s signage or the finding aids or the collections fail the user.
(Anne G. Lipow, “Point of Need Reference Service: no longer an afterthought,” in ALA-RUSA The Future of Reference Services Papers)

Do you come to the Reference Desk for f2f consultation with a librarian? Why or why not?

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