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Finally, a real blog post!

I have to admit it's nice to be able to dust off the old posting engine and get to writing again. Of course, I may have picked a lousy time to do it -- the semester hasn't calmed down as I thought it might post-October. But that's okay. I soldiered through it last year and can do it again!

Anyway, this post is going to be for the power users, people who use our more specialized resources with a narrower focus; there are ways to get at our electronic resources from our home page at library.gallaudet.edu without going through the ALADIN portal page, which usually adds a step or two to the process. Then why do we have it in the first place? I'll explain further down; first things first.

Our most heavily-used resources available on the ALADIN page are technically five-fold, but really three:

1/2) ProQuest Research Library/Ebscohost Academic Search Complete
3/4) Databases by Subject/Databases by Title
5) Gallaudet e-Journals

I grouped ProQuest and Ebscohost together because they're very similar in terms of their utility for our students; both are large aggregators that collect licenses which allow them to provide access to thousands of academic journals in hundreds of disciplines. They are, in general, terrific places to start and will, for the majority of class assignments, be all that's needed. They're relatively convenient and are therefore the most heavily-used, particularly by undergraduates. The setup is simple enough for most -- click on "ALADIN" on library.gallaudet.edu, then click on the link to either ProQuest or Ebscohost, then start searching -- so we don't worry as much about adding shortcuts.

On the other hand, our more specialized offerings are a little harder to get to. We have a lot -- around fifty specialized databases and, whether directly or indirectly, access to thousands of electronic journals -- so there's no real way to just provide a one-click discovery process.

Still, we've tried. Take the databases, for instance. Fifty's a fairly manageable number, and we've categorized them according to discipline and function -- such as "Medical sciences" and "Education" for the former and "Multi-Subject" (meaning multidisciplinary databases like ProQuest and others) and "Reference" (like Credo and the Encyclopedia Britannica) for the latter.

That's the basis for the Databases by Subject link on ALADIN, but -- and this is less well-known -- also for the Database QuickAccess drop-down menu in the "Research Help" box on library.gallaudet.edu. All of our categories are listed in that menu; pick one that fits your topic, click "Go," and you'll see a list of all of our databases that will contain relevant information.

So to review:

Going through ALADIN to a specialized database = library.gallaudet.edu + "ALADIN" link + "Databases by Subject" link + category link + database link

Using Database QuickAccess = library.gallaudet.edu + category link + database link

So obviously not perfect, but a distinct improvement.

Another imperfect-but-better shortcut is for our electronic journal search page. The database categories help in a very general way, but for a specific resource, the rest of the journey to your journal goes through this search page.

The process is similar to what you do for databases when you go through ALADIN, although since there are no categories to go through, it's a little shorter. We've made it even shorter by including a link to "GA's e-Journals" on library.gallaudet.edu in the "Research Help" box (why GA? It saves space and is our WRLC abbreviation); just click on it and start searching.

Again, this is mostly for the power user: researchers who know exactly what journals they want. If you don't know this, you're better off with ProQuest, Ebscohost, and the database categories. Or you can always go to the chat widget on our Web site and ask us for help. We can help you decide which database is best for your assignment.

The other three shortcuts I have in mind are fairly straightforward, although they may not seem so at first glance.

The first is, of course, LibGuides. As with Database QuickAccess and e-Journals, the shortcut is in the "Research Help" box. Most students encounter LibGuides with a direct link to the one made specifically for their course or general subject, but don't know that they can see the overall listing of LibGuides and browse through them. It's all right there!

The second is RefWorks. It's actually listed in the "Reference" database category that you can get to through QuickAccess, but for the most part, it's not strictly necessary to do that; you can head straight there through the link from the "Research Help" box.

The last one is our search box -- not the one for the catalog. That one's pretty clear (or at least I hope so). No, I'm talking about the one down on the bottom of the page. It'll let you search for anything on all of our Web pages and this blog. This is actually a pretty huge shortcut that covers anything from "Songs in ASL" to book titles that may have been reviewed in this blog. It's pretty neat and is powered by Google, so you know it's good.

Yes, I realize the irony of a librarian saying that something from Google is "good." Chortle and let's move on with our lives, okay?

That's it for this week. Thanks for tuning in; no vlog next week, either, because I have a short and very busy week in store for myself. But I'll post something, never fear!