. . . now in a wiki!!!!
I am currently in the process of moving my help guides over to a wiki platform.
Please go to Psychology Research Help to find the guides.
September 18, 2009
March 10, 2008
Psychology Research Resources
As back-up to my classroom instruction sessions for psychology, I am providing some help guides here in Periodical World.
All of these help guides are under the Pages heading on the right side blog menu; they are also linked from this post.
There are several selections, each with a slightly different focus:
- Empirical Research: what is empirical research and how to recognize it
- Psychology Research Using PsycINFO: a page about PsycINFO with links to a printable MSWord document explaining PsycINFO searching as well as to pdf documents on Methodologies and fields in PsycINFO records
- Using PubMed for Research: how to search for research articles in PubMed
Also, knowing how to cite your sources is of critical importance. The library’s general help page for all subjects is linked here.
A specific source for finding writing help and teaching resources in the APA Style, as well as others, is The OWL (online writing lab) at Purdue University.
Northern Michigan University has an excellent online tutorial with a flash video presentation on APA Style for referencing online articles using the doi (digital object identifier), a unique alpha-numeric code for linking to permanent record versions of journal articles. Here is a link to an earlier blog post about those new APA guidelines for documenting electronic resources: APA style guide to electronic references.
A few words about the APA style when writing papers:
In addition to the General APA Guidelines for formating a paper, there are two common types of papers psychology students will be asked to write or to review: the literature review and the experimental report.
Each has unique requirements concerning the sections that must be included in the paper; specific information can be found at the OWL site at Purdue University.
I hope students & faculty find this resource useful for reviewing, or expanding on, what I cover in a library instruction session that is sometimes too short on time.
Please feel free to use the comments as a way to ask questions or get more guidance.
February 22, 2008
The Librarian, 1947 version
Brewster Kahle spoke yesterday at the Davies Forum run by David Silver, Media Studies professor. He is the founder and digital librarian at the non-profit Internet Archive; he also helps direct the Open Content Alliance. “Public or perish, universal access to all knowledge,” are his battle cries.
Visit the Internet Archive and you can spend many hours reading, watching and enjoying yourself. In the Moving Images database you will find all sorts of wonderful films. One of my faves, naturally, is The Librarian (1947). Watching this vocational film definitely has the feel of a “wayback” moment — I find it intriguing to see what a librarian career choice meant 60 years ago (yes . . . 60 years!) and how, in a funny/odd sort of way, the more things change, the more things stay the same. Watch and see what you think.
February 21, 2008
Valentine’s Day Massacre
. . . in the Periodicals Stacks.
Or, more precisely, mutilation of the still living bodies of several library journals.
Yes, mutilation . . . it’s a true, sad secret in many academic libraries & it happens here at USF.
On Valentine’s Day, 2 hoodlums skulked into our Periodicals stacks and proceeded to rip pages out and covers off of several journals that belong to the library and, by extension, to all USF students, faculty and staff.
A student worker saw them acting suspiciously and came to tell her supervisor. Before she could finish explaining, the culprits were leaving. The deed was done, the damaged materials left behind as evidence.
If these thugs had read the Student Handbook, they would have read the part under Student Academic Honesty Policy that says:
“Adherence to standards of honesty and integrity precludes
engaging in, causing, or knowingly benefiting from any aspect
of cheating on assignments or examinations including
but not limited to: . . .(13) removal, mutilation, or deliberate concealment
of academic materials belonging to the University libraries,
computer laboratories, or other learning resource centers”
If a student is caught engaging in this type of behavior, a complaint may be reported to the Committee on Student Academic Honesty. Violators are subject to disciplinary action; sanctions for academic dishonesty range from reprimands and counseling to expulsion from the University.
This is pretty “big stuff” for students to consider — a whole academic “life” tainted or even ended because of the petty theft or vandalism of library materials.
As a librarian, I just wish we didn’t have to deal with this — it’s ugly and it certainly doesn’t fit with the image we have of the students we think we see every day. They have respect for their institution as well as the resources provided for their academic use and they respect the people who work and attend classes here.
So, who then, are these people who do this kind of thing . . . ?
February 14, 2008
Momentum building for Gleeson|Geschke blog!
The power of social networks and online community still astounds me. It is almost breathtaking when I consider the speed at which one, or many, can be published on the web and the synergy that is created when comments or blog posts link to each other.
In December 2007, a group of us at Gleeson Library worked at getting a blog started. By the first week in February 2008, we were up and running and linked to the library home page with a google gadget.
Thus, Gleeson Gleanings was brought forth into the world.
Our “coach” and enthusiastic supporter — USF Media Studies professor, David Silver — blogged about our blog in his own silverinsf.
We blogged about his Davies Forum, Digital Literacy program in Gleeson Gleanings.
There are comments in David’s blog and there are comments in our blog.
Ivan Chew, tonight’s Davies Forum speaker, has left a comment in our blog and linked from David’s post to his blog where he mentions Gleeson Gleanings.
All of this within less than two weeks!!
All of this attention and feedback is not only extremely rewarding but I also don’t know when the last time was that I’ve had so much positive reinforcement. I hope my colleagues and blog work group members get the same thrill as I do — thank you so much to Debbie Benrubi, Kelci Baughman-McDowell, Jessica Lu and Karen Johnson. And thank you to Randy Souther for the google gadget. And Tyrone Cannon, Library Dean, for his support and endorsement.
It’s even inspired me to post in my own blog, a big step considering my preference for staying out of the public eye. Ah well, into the blogosphere I go, like Alice taking that step into the rabbit hole . . .
December 19, 2007
Internet, web-accessed databases, student research
A recent article in the USF student newspaper has caused me some anguish as a librarian.
The student author of the article has garbled the descriptions and blurred the lines between “the internet” and the databases the library licenses that are accessible via the internet. Since he mentions Gleeson Library, I felt a need to write about this and clarify the differences between the two.
As the author points out, use of the internet for academic research has limitations with regard to reliability, authenticity, credibility, and accessibility. However, he fails to point out that Google searching, use of Wikipedia and other such internet resources are entirely different from accessing licensed library databases on the web.
When professors tell students not to use internet sources in their research papers they mean, don’t do Google searches and then cite any old web page that is retrieved. They do not mean, don’t utilize authoritative and credible databases provided by the library via the internet. Those very databases are where students can search for scholarly journal articles, empirical research studies, opinion pieces and statistics — the very relevant and essential content needed in order to write a quality, university-level essay or research paper. Most of those articles are available full-text, in html or pdf format, and can be printed out in the library, computer lab or at home.
There are also many government and educational websites on the internet that can be used for writing papers at university.
Of course, from my perspective as a librarian, the most egregious omission in the article is the failure to mention the assistance students can (and should) request at their college or university library. Librarians come to work every day looking forward to assisting students in their quest for information. We are accessible in-person or online and we invite all USF students to Ask A Librarian.
December 14, 2007
Faculty Journal Subscription Requests
Faculty can now submit an online request for Gleeson Library to add a new journal subscription. Requests must be accompanied by a written statement justifying the need for the journal and should fit the criteria outlined in the policy Considerations for acquisition of new Periodicals.
Links to the policy and online form can be found on the library web pages under:
December 12, 2007
USF Book Club
Did you know USF has a book club? The book club meets in the Seminar Room on the 2nd floor of the library.
Gleeson Library and the USF Well-Life Center are the co-sponsors; all USF faculty & staff are invited to participate. Please help spread the word!
The next meeting of the USF Book Club is on Monday, January 14, 2008 from noon-1pm.
Please join us to discuss Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
Brown bag lunch is welcome; bring your own copy of the book.
December 3, 2007
Thacher Gallery — LAND exhibit October 29, 2007-January 6, 2008
LAND – A Multi-Disciplinary Art Installation and Performance Exploring Urban Regeneration and Sites of Transformation
Dance Elixir director and choreographer, Leyya Tawil, teams up with media installation artist, David Szlasa, composer Topher Keyes, writer Phill Weber, costumer Leigh Anne Martin, and USF arts students to reflect on the continuous transformation of urban terrain and population.
Check it out before the library closes for Christmas!
November 30, 2007
Michael Wesch Web 2.0 videos
Two of my favourite Web 2.0 videos are by Michael Wesch, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University — he’s a cultural anthropologist and media ecologist exploring the impact of new media on human interaction (from his web page).
The videos are creative, fun to watch and kind of give me chills . . . As a librarian and an archivist with an interest in cultural anthropology and social psychology I find it amazingly exciting to be part of the paradigm shift going on with the ways people describe, access, use and relate to information and each other.
So, here they are:
Information R/evolution
The machine is us/ing us
November 13, 2007
The journal, Science
Through a combination of our print collection of Science, the JSTOR archive and a current online Science web subscription, Gleeson Library now provides access to the entire run of Science, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Links to this journal are easily located by a title search through the library’s Journal Finder
September 25, 2007
New APA citation style for electronic articles
As many of you are aware, APA made a couple of major changes this summer in how electronic articles are to be cited in reference lists. Instead of issuing a new edition of the style manual, they created a PDF download that covered just the changes.
The library now has the rights to allow campus-wide access to this update through a password protected link to the document in the library’s catalog. It’s available to all USF students, faculty and staff.
The link to the catalog record is here: APA style guide to electronic references [electronic resource]
Once the record is pulled up, click on the “View or Print: APA style guide to electronic references pdf” and you will be prompted to login with your name and USF ID number. Once this is done, the pdf of the document will be retrieved.
Shortly there will also be a link on the library’s Documenting Sources web page to link people directly to the document.
July 17, 2007
Electronic journal access replaces print
We have been subscribing to a number of the Nature publications online for a few years now. During this same time, we have maintained a print copy of Nature and Nature Biotechnology. This can no longer be done as the price for the print copy has doubled in the past 4 years from roughly $1200/year to almost $2400/year for EACH title. As of January 2008, we will rely on electronic access only for those titles.
In addition, with the recent addition of online access to JAMA and 6 of the American Medical Association “Archives of” journals, the library will stop carrying the print copies of JAMA and Archives of General Psychiatry as of January 2008.
This is the direction journal access is taking in the 21st century. It used to be that a library subscribed to print collections of periodicals; students, faculty and staff needed to physically visit the library in order to view and copy articles.
Now, electronic journal collections, along with full-text article access through databases, is not only changing the landscape of the library but enabling our patrons to do library research no matter where they are — at home, in the library atrium, in the campus computer labs, even while eating lunch in the Market Cafe or enjoying a Jamba Juice on the lower level of University Center.
This “new world” of journal access has expanded the research options for students and faculty and is making it easier to find the articles needed for a term paper, a thesis literature review or a grant-funded empirical study.
If you want to learn more about how to use the library’s electronic resources, please visit the 2nd floor Periodicals Desk, the 1st floor Reference Desk or contact us through our Ask a Librarian web page.
July 13, 2007
Periodicals Bindery or, what in the heck is “To Bind”?
Ever wonder where that journal went, especially since you drove all the way from home to the library to get it off the shelf and make a photocopy?
Here’s the scoop:
Periodicals are shelved alphabetically by title in the stacks; each title is shelved in chronological order, beginning with the oldest bound issues and continuing up to the latest received unbound issues. Every month we go out and gather bundles and prep (prepare) them for the bindery.
The library binds together individual issues of a journal title to better protect and preserve them. Depending upon the frequency of publication, along with the thickness of individual issues, titles are bound in volume sets ranging anywhere from monthly to yearly. The span of issues covered is printed on the spine of each volume.
As you look for a particular issue, you may notice there are a range of missing issues/years between the bound volumes and the most recent unbound issues. These missing items may be at the bindery or in bindery prep and that is why they are not on the shelf.
One way to check on this is to look at the library record for the journal in Ignacio (hint: search by Title of journal). This shows our holdings (Lib. Has: date range) plus some other information about the publisher and formats. If you click on the hyperlink “Latest Received,” this link will open a new window showing the check-in boxes for individual issues with the date and status – Expected, Arrived, etc. Here’s an example Seventeenth Century News
When a group of issues is gathered and sent to the bindery, all of the boxes for that group are set “To Bind” and the date they were shipped out is also displayed. Upon return of the bound volumes from the bindery, all the boxes are collapsed into one box for each volume & date range and the status shows as “Bound.” A set of issues sent to the bindery will return to the library shelves in 1-2 months.
So, if you are ever in the periodicals stacks and can’t find a group of issues you think should be on the shelf, they may be at the bindery. And, whether it’s a question of one or more issues missing from the shelf or a matter of needing some help finding articles in print or electronic formats, please don’t hesitate to come over to the Periodicals Service Desk and ask for assistance. We are there to help and would love to talk to you.
