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 . . . ?

 

 

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:

• Information – Periodicals
• Faculty Services – Library Liaisons
• Faculty Services – Requesting Materials

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

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.

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.

New stuff

JAMA and other journals:

After a couple of years of wrangling we now finally have access from 1998-present for JAMA and the following 6 archive journals: Archives of Neurology, Archives of Internal Medicine, Archives of General Psychiatry, Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, Archives of Dermatology and Archives of Surgery.

Search for them in our Journal Finder: Journal Finder
and follow the link to the American Medical Association Journals.

Opening Day

A little about this blog . . . I decided I needed a better way to tell students, faculty and staff about things that are happening in the library and in the Periodicals Unit, in particular. I will be writing about electronic journals as well as print journals; giving some “behind the scenes” insight into how the periodicals collection is acquired, managed and made accessible to USF students, faculty and staff; and providing some helpful guides on using and troubleshooting the various electronic resources available to the USF community. I hope you find this informative and interesting and that you let me know if there is something you just have to know about serials.