Database Update - Global Market International Database

Euromonitor International’s Global Market International Database has a new interface. Enhancements to the new interface include:

• more related content, giving users quick access to information they may not realize exists in the subscription
• help functionality is much improved - more comprehensive and available online

The new interface also include the latest international market news, a two minute guide of the website and the latest reports.

Xrefer is now Credo Reference

Xrefer has changed its name to Credo Reference. John Dove, CEO of Credo Reference states:

"While the former name spoke to one of the many benefits of our functionality, cross-linking across content from hundreds of quality titles from dozens of the best reference publishers, it was far from memorable to those who might hear it for the first time. This made it hard to pass along via word-of-mouth. Our new name speaks to one of main challenges for online reference publishing, namely how to stand out from the confusing jumble of information and misinformation that today's online information seeker encounters." For the entire press release click here.

Chesnutt Library students, faculty and staff can still access the same Xrefer content by selecting C from our databases alphabetically or typing Credo in the Title or Keyword database search box.

New Subject Guide - Finding Primary Document Resources

The Chesnutt Library’s new subject guide – Finding Primary Document Resources – is now posted under our Subject Guide link located on our library homepage. This guide explains what constitutes primary documents and lists available library databases where you can find primary document resources.

Database of the Week - Literary Reference Center

If you need to access quality literary criticism or primary sources for a paper, the Literary Reference Center is a one stop research database for comprehensive material from antiquity to the present day. The Literary Reference Center is a helpful online research tool for locating information about a writer, finding criticism about an author or a particular work of literature, and identifying specific date ranges for literary figures, movements, and historical events. The LRC also contains full text poems and short stories.

LRC provides information from over 1,000 books and monographs, major literary encyclopedias and reference works, hundreds of literary journals, and unique sources not available anywhere else. The Literary Reference Center provides full text access to more than 10,000 plot summaries, synopses, and work overviews; 75,000 articles of literary criticism; 130,000 author biographies; full text of more than 300 literary journals; 500,000 book reviews; 25,000 classic and contemporary poems; over 11,000 classic and contemporary short stories; full text of more than 7,500 classic novels over 3,000 author interviews; and over 1,000 images of literary figures.

LRC is available both on and off campus to current FSU students, faculty and staff.

You can search LRC by author, title, or keyword or choose the advance search function to do a more refined search. Search results can be sorted by document type: biographies, literary criticism, plot summaries, reviews, interviews, reference books, periodicals, poems, short stories, and images. The LRC also provides a glossary that you can use to look up literary terms. The ease of locating a variety of full text literature resources makes LRC a great online research database.

Denise Bosselman, Bibliographic Instruction/Distance Education Librarian

WorldCat Update

WorldCat has added the ability to create lists – lists of books, videos, music – pretty much any library resource found in WorldCat. Registration is required, but painless. Although an OCLC blog lists several uses for the lists such as book clubs, recommended reading lists, etc. – I thought their suggestion:

“for the academicians among us, you could load up the required readings from a syllabus into a WorldCat list--students could see at a glance which editions/articles were available at the library, what was checked out already, available as an eBook, etc.”

might be of interest to our faculty. So go start making your lists - favorite books, CDs, movies - and check out lists by other people.

source: Distant Librarian

Database of the Week - Criminology: A Sage Full-text Collection

Criminology: A Sage Full-text Collection is a searchable database that includes the full text of 23 journals. Each article has a bibliographic record with indexed summaries or abstracts and a link the full-text in PDF format. Topics covered include criminal justices, juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, corrections, penology, policing, forensic psychology, and family and domestic violence.

The savvy searcher starts by going to the Advanced Search screen. Don’t be alarmed by all those boxes! Boxes in the same row are being searched with the Boolean “OR,” so if you want to search for family OR domestic, and getting results with either or both terms will do, put them in boxes on the same row. Rows of boxes are combined with Boolean terms, and you get to choose which term (AND, OR, NOT) to use, AND is the default. So, if you want to search for family AND violence, and you want results with both terms then put your terms in different rows. Searches can also be limited by date range.

Search results are grouped by publication type, such as journals, peer-reviewed journals, conference literature, books, etc. Researchers can click on the tab for a publication type tab to display results by data type or publication type. To the left of each search result is a list of Descriptors. Descriptors are indexing terms from a thesaurus or controlled vocabulary assigned to the article. Clicking on a Descriptor will run a new search for similar articles that contain the same Descriptor. When you click on the article title or View Record you can see entire record including the author, abstract, and the references listed.

Criminology includes features to help researchers collect and manage citations. When researchers find an article they want to use, they click the box beside the article then click on Update Marked List and the article will be added to their Marked Records. From Marked Records researchers can email, print, or save a bibliography of the citations they have collected.

Criminology is just one of the valuable criminal justice research resources available at Chesnutt Library. The ease of searching and availability of full-text resources make it a good starting point for your criminal justice research.

Laura Bell Wright,
Interlibrary Loan & Reference Librarian

Congratulations to Laura Bell Wright

Laura Bell participated in North Carolina’s Master Trainer Program this past fall and spring, graduating from the program in April 2007. The Master Trainer Program is a statewide initiative to increase library staff skills in planning and doing effective training programs for their coworkers. Participants in the Master Trainer program learn principles of training design, develop presentation skills, and use technology effectively as a teaching and learning tool.

Laura Bell’s office is located on the first floor. You can also reach Laura Bell by email at lwright@uncfsu.edu or by telephone 910-672-1555.

Laura Bell’s research interests include interlibrary loan and access services, and information literacy. She received a master’s degree in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in August 2003 and a B.S. in Biology from Emory University in 1999. When she has time off Laura Bell enjoys exercise videos, reading, knitting socks, and training her Pomeranian, Isabeau, to conquer the world.

Database of the Week - MathSciNet

MathSciNet is an electronic publication offering access to a carefully maintained and easily searchable database of review, abstracts and bibliographic information for much of the mathematical sciences literature. Over 80,000 new items are added each year, most of them classified according to the Mathematics Subject Classification. Authors are uniquely identified, enabling a search for publications by individual author rather than by name string. Continuing in the tradition of the paper publication Mathematical Reviews (MR), which was first published in 1940, expert reviewers are selected by a staff of professional mathematicians to write reviews of the current published literature; over 60,000 reviews are added to the database each year. Extending the MR tradition, MathSciNet contains over 2 million items and over 700,000 direct links to original articles.

MathSciNet has a very easy to navigate interface with simple tabs covering the main areas of the database. The tabs include Publications, Authors, Journals, Author Citations, and Journal Citations. You can search Publications by using one or all of the four search boxes provided. Among the many options for search terms in the search boxes are Author, Title, Journal, Review Text and MSC primary. MathSciNet allows you to limit your Publications search by Time Frame and Publication Type. Author searches the author database and returns authors identified uniquely according to their publications as well as a listing of name variations. Journals searches the MR journal database and returns a journal or list of journals with links to bibliographic information, websites, and issues listed in MathSciNet. Author Citations returns up to 10 items ordered by the number of matched references in MathSciNet reference lists. Journal Citations returns information about citations to the journal of interest based on matched reference lists from MathSciNet.

An author search for publications by one of Fayetteville State’s math professors, Dr. Bo Zhang, yielded a list of preferred author names. By passing the cursor to the left of the name a sample of the publication appears containing citation information. By passing the cursor over the actual name you can then choose to View Publications, Refine Search, find Co-Authors, establish Collaboration Distance or make a Link. Once you select the preferred name, in my sample search I selected the first Zhang, Bo¹, a list of his publications appear. Select a result and you can choose to view or print the PDF version of the article, save it to your Clipboard, view the Journal or view or print the abstract and citation. In some instances some of these options are not available.

While MathSciNet sounds like an intimidating name for a database (at least to the mathematically challenged such as me) no math skills are necessary in order to search the database. It gives you several options for searching and, if you do get stuck, the Help link gives you tips on how to make your search better.

Source: MathSciNet

Linette Neal, Reference Librarian

Free Tutorials from IEEE

We recently posted on the IEEE Computer Society Digital Library's latest enhancements to its services, namely the ability to provide quick citation download for use in your personal bibliography and reference management tools. The IEEE Communications Society also provides free tutorials. According to IEEE, each tutorial reviews current communications topics in network management and computer and wireless communications.

This month's tutorials include:

Broadband Wireless Access: The Next Wireless Revolution

Looking Ahead: Technology Evolution and the Biz of Telecommunications

Trends in Communication: An Environment Overview

For more information and a complete list of tutorials visit their Tutorial Home Page.

Source: IEEE, ResourceShelf

Added feature to Journal Finder

Chesnutt Library has recently added a step-by-step video to help you locate journals and e-journals through the library’s Journal Finder, located under Research Tools on our homepage. Just click on the How to Video link in Journal Finder for more information.