The Army of the Republic by Stuart Archer Cohen.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
ALADIN Mobile
I was browsing through the latest WRLC monthly newsletter -- it's sent out to all librarians in the Consortium and updates us all on what the high mucky-mucks in Upper Marlboro are up to as a result of our collaboration -- and thought I'd take another look at last month's newsletter.
It just happened to mention ALADIN Mobile and how well it's been doing over the past six months.
Hmm, I thought to myself. Have I done a blog post about that? It's the kind of thing people ought to know, especially with the increasing prevalence of Web-heavy but Flash-light (no groans from the peanut gallery, please) devices like iPhones and iPads, which can't handle the full power of our catalog directly from our home page.
So I did a search from our home page for anything in this blog that might have mentioned it, and came up with this. It's in the Question of the Week, way down at the bottom, and is a little thin on details.
Well, details are what librarians do best, so here goes!
First, ALADIN Mobile is, obviously, a response to the aforementioned increase in portable Web devices. It's a mobile Web site at m.wrlc.org that's been optimized for browsers on Apple and Android devices (as well as those who qualify as "other"). It's been slickly designed to resemble an actual app and has three significant functions:
In general, it's a pretty great thing for us to have -- I know it is for me. It's saved me a ton of money when I find myself trapped in a bookstore with no way out except past the cash register; I just look it up on my phone and if we have it, I don't get it. And increasingly, it's available here or at a Consortium library!
It's also useful for doing quick research when you're not at a computer or when it's not convenient to use one -- say, on the Metro on your way in to campus, eating lunch in the cafeteria, or walking out of your book group (because if you're not first to make the CLS request, someone else in your book group will beat you to it, and then where will you be? Not that I've ever been in that position ... ).
It's also great for navigating the stacks downstairs if you need a few books but can only find one on the shelf; often there will be related books in the general vicinity, but different aspects of the same topic (such as psychological assessments of Napoleon versus prevalent medical conditions of the time that might explain his behavior) may be shelved in completely different parts of the Library. ALADIN Mobile can save you the trip upstairs and back. A small improvement but measurable.
I know, all of this sounds kind of commercial -- of course I'm pushing a service that the Consortium provides. But even if I weren't a Library shill, I'd still use ALADIN Mobile pretty heavily. I might be an outlier -- what normal person considers buying a book every time he walks by the Hudson News by the Amtrak gates in Union Station? -- but it has real utility and performs it in a very appealing and accessible manner.
Okay, that's about it for today. You'll get yourselves a vlog before the end of the week -- the first one since the last week of October!
It just happened to mention ALADIN Mobile and how well it's been doing over the past six months.
Hmm, I thought to myself. Have I done a blog post about that? It's the kind of thing people ought to know, especially with the increasing prevalence of Web-heavy but Flash-light (no groans from the peanut gallery, please) devices like iPhones and iPads, which can't handle the full power of our catalog directly from our home page.
So I did a search from our home page for anything in this blog that might have mentioned it, and came up with this. It's in the Question of the Week, way down at the bottom, and is a little thin on details.
Well, details are what librarians do best, so here goes!
First, ALADIN Mobile is, obviously, a response to the aforementioned increase in portable Web devices. It's a mobile Web site at m.wrlc.org that's been optimized for browsers on Apple and Android devices (as well as those who qualify as "other"). It's been slickly designed to resemble an actual app and has three significant functions:
- Search the catalog
- Including the holdings of all Consortium universities or just Gallaudet
- Request items through CLS on the go
- Text the record of the item you're looking at (so you can get the number right away when you arrive at the library on your way somewhere else)
- E-mail it to yourself as a reminder later
- Use myALADIN
- Check what books you have borrowed
- Check fines incurred
- Unfortunately you cannot renew items through the mobile app -- that's still largely the province of myALADIN on your home computer.
- Find locations and hours. This sounds simple, but ...
- Finding the location for a specific library will automatically take you to Google Maps, which will display that location
- Today's hours are automatically displayed in the listing for each library, and for each library, the full hours are displayed. It saves you a lot of time and irritation!
In general, it's a pretty great thing for us to have -- I know it is for me. It's saved me a ton of money when I find myself trapped in a bookstore with no way out except past the cash register; I just look it up on my phone and if we have it, I don't get it. And increasingly, it's available here or at a Consortium library!
It's also useful for doing quick research when you're not at a computer or when it's not convenient to use one -- say, on the Metro on your way in to campus, eating lunch in the cafeteria, or walking out of your book group (because if you're not first to make the CLS request, someone else in your book group will beat you to it, and then where will you be? Not that I've ever been in that position ... ).
It's also great for navigating the stacks downstairs if you need a few books but can only find one on the shelf; often there will be related books in the general vicinity, but different aspects of the same topic (such as psychological assessments of Napoleon versus prevalent medical conditions of the time that might explain his behavior) may be shelved in completely different parts of the Library. ALADIN Mobile can save you the trip upstairs and back. A small improvement but measurable.
I know, all of this sounds kind of commercial -- of course I'm pushing a service that the Consortium provides. But even if I weren't a Library shill, I'd still use ALADIN Mobile pretty heavily. I might be an outlier -- what normal person considers buying a book every time he walks by the Hudson News by the Amtrak gates in Union Station? -- but it has real utility and performs it in a very appealing and accessible manner.
Okay, that's about it for today. You'll get yourselves a vlog before the end of the week -- the first one since the last week of October!
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Two new events
Things are going on!
First, we've got another Bookmobile tomorrow, Nov. 12, from 11:30-1:30 p.m. in the JSAC MarketPlace. As usual, DVDs and books will be available for checkout. We got a good response last time, so we've been encouraged. Stop by and check us (and one or two of our items) out!
Second, we're hosting a Common Reading discussion panel next Tuesday, Nov. 16, from 12:30-2 p.m. in room B111 here in the Library.
We're excited about this! The Library sponsored a discussion panel with the FYS department a couple of weeks ago -- about the Common Reading -- and were stunned at the turnout. Over 40 people showed up -- and this was during Homecoming Week and during Common Time, so we were competing with not only school spirit, but also other worthy events happening around campus.
Afterward, the panelists, the moderator (okay, I admit it. I was the moderator), and sponsors were asked to host another one. So we are!
If you missed the first one, here's what it's all about: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
We gathered together a group of faculty from various departments and plunked them down together with some leading questions and audience participation to see what would happen. The participants were:
Kirk VanGilder -- Philosophy/Religion
Elizabeth Gibbons -- Psychology
Jane Dillehay -- GSR/Biology
Carie Palmer -- English
Jerri Lyn Dorminy -- FYE/Common Reading Committee representative
We got off to a good start with some comments from each participant about the book and how it related to their fields, and then things got interesting. Dr. Dillehay and VanGilder quickly got into a fascinating discussion of what it meant to be human -- he from the ethical perspective, she from the perspective of an applied scientist. The truth is, the book itself brings up an ethical quagmire that we're still sorting out today, relating to patient confidentiality and informed consent about procedures done on your body, to say nothing of the basic ownership of your own biological material once it's been separated from you.
Without going into too much detail -- we could go for hours on this, and very nearly did in the last discussion panel -- it was a fascinating discussion.
This time around, we'll have a different mix of people:
Edgar Palmer -- Orientation
Derek Braun -- Biology
Jeffrey Brune -- History/Government
Arlene Kelly -- ASL/Deaf Studies
Thomas Horejes -- Sociology
Jerri Lyn Dorminy will change seats, going from the one she sat in as a panelist to the one I sat in as the moderator. An interesting discussion is guaranteed -- feel free to come, watch, comment, and learn!
First, we've got another Bookmobile tomorrow, Nov. 12, from 11:30-1:30 p.m. in the JSAC MarketPlace. As usual, DVDs and books will be available for checkout. We got a good response last time, so we've been encouraged. Stop by and check us (and one or two of our items) out!
Second, we're hosting a Common Reading discussion panel next Tuesday, Nov. 16, from 12:30-2 p.m. in room B111 here in the Library.
We're excited about this! The Library sponsored a discussion panel with the FYS department a couple of weeks ago -- about the Common Reading -- and were stunned at the turnout. Over 40 people showed up -- and this was during Homecoming Week and during Common Time, so we were competing with not only school spirit, but also other worthy events happening around campus.
Afterward, the panelists, the moderator (okay, I admit it. I was the moderator), and sponsors were asked to host another one. So we are!
If you missed the first one, here's what it's all about: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
We gathered together a group of faculty from various departments and plunked them down together with some leading questions and audience participation to see what would happen. The participants were:
Kirk VanGilder -- Philosophy/Religion
Elizabeth Gibbons -- Psychology
Jane Dillehay -- GSR/Biology
Carie Palmer -- English
Jerri Lyn Dorminy -- FYE/Common Reading Committee representative
We got off to a good start with some comments from each participant about the book and how it related to their fields, and then things got interesting. Dr. Dillehay and VanGilder quickly got into a fascinating discussion of what it meant to be human -- he from the ethical perspective, she from the perspective of an applied scientist. The truth is, the book itself brings up an ethical quagmire that we're still sorting out today, relating to patient confidentiality and informed consent about procedures done on your body, to say nothing of the basic ownership of your own biological material once it's been separated from you.
Without going into too much detail -- we could go for hours on this, and very nearly did in the last discussion panel -- it was a fascinating discussion.
This time around, we'll have a different mix of people:
Edgar Palmer -- Orientation
Derek Braun -- Biology
Jeffrey Brune -- History/Government
Arlene Kelly -- ASL/Deaf Studies
Thomas Horejes -- Sociology
Jerri Lyn Dorminy will change seats, going from the one she sat in as a panelist to the one I sat in as the moderator. An interesting discussion is guaranteed -- feel free to come, watch, comment, and learn!
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Three book reviews
It's book review time! Now, I've been reading so much -- and writing so little -- recently that I thought it might be interesting to see if I could fit not one, not two, but three book reviews into this post. Don't worry; they won't be all that long. I hope. You never know with these things.
Anyway, a word of warning: Because of my own natural inclinations, all three have a decidedly sci-fi bent. However, there is much more to these fellas than meets the eye.
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
This is a pretty complicated narrative, set in Bangkok, Thailand after the world has warmed and the seas have risen. It's a time of global upheaval as huge numbers of species, both plant and animal, have gone extinct and plague and famine are widespread. Civilization is hanging on by its fingernails only because of the rise of massive multinational conglomerates that specialize in genetic engineering; many extinct species are extinct only in their pure form, having been spliced with other species to create hardier hybrids. Those hybrids are then priced upwards by the corporations holding the patent on their genes, making them available only to the wealthy or larcenous. Energy is also scarce and is often obtained by the use of "kink-springs" -- a new technique of constructing wind-up metal springs that require tons of elbow grease to collect and store energy, which is then discharged to run everything from televisions to cross-country trains. Because of the kink-spring technology, the most precious form of energy is now kilocalories, stored in human bodies and discharged through physical work.
In the middle of all this is a "calorieman" -- an agent of one of those giant bioengineering corporations -- who's in Thailand illegally in order to sniff out any extinct plant or animal species that may have been resurrected in its pure form by famed Thai bioengineers. For example, plants in the nightshade family -- including chili peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes -- grow wild everywhere in Thailand, but are extinct everywhere else, and fetch a high price on the global market. Thailand's laws strictly forbid the import or export of biological specimens of any kind, so he manages to get wrapped up in a nest of intrigue when he falls into a failed venture attempting to develop a new kind of kink-spring, and ends up making a significant difference in the future of the Thai government, which just happens to benefit his employers.
Wandering throughout this story is a genetically-engineered Japanese geisha -- the windup girl of the title -- who holds a few secrets of her own, including what may be the eventual future of the human race.
As I said, complicated! But recommended.
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Another bioengineering-gone-wild tale, this book is brought to you by the author of A Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake, which is sort of the sequel to Year of the Flood. In this book, the apocalypse has already happened; in a society where biological engineering is rampant and easy enough to accomplish in a 15-minute bathroom session, a plague breaks loose and wipes almost everyone out. Those who are left have to figure out how to cope in a world which not only suffers from a scarcity of food, but also from an abundance of dangerous animals that have been much-changed from the ones we know now.
The story itself follows several survivors who are refugees from God's Gardeners, a sort of tree-hugging cult that consisted of both hippie rooftop gardeners and anticonsumerist shoe-bombers. They believe in the sanctity of all animal life and eat nothing but plants, but see nothing wrong with accomplishing their ideal world by the judicious application of a few pieces of C4.
It's a fairly slow-paced book, alternating between the flashbacks of two characters, Ren and Toby, and their present lives; things don't really start to get exciting until you're close to the end of the book. Still, it's a fascinating exercise in world-building, reading about the society Atwood imagines springing out of our penchant for plastic surgery and fiddling with our cell phones, and how quickly it can all go incredibly wrong.
Even more interesting is its relationship with Oryx and Crake. I said it's sort of a prequel, but the way both books are written, it really doesn't matter which you read first. The three central characters in Oryx don't show up often in Year of the Flood, but when they do, it's telegraphed clearly enough that you know that this is a missing part of the history of Crake and the end of the human race. And it's all written in Atwood's style, which is both stark and reflective; she really has a unique turn of phrase all her own.
Recommended for people with patience and a willingness to spend more time wandering through events instead of plunging through them; I loved it, but it's not for everyone.
The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
This is actually a re-read. It was one of my favorite books when I was younger, and it really was the last book I was expecting to find anywhere, much less right here where I work! No bioengineering here; it's a classic collection of short stories by a famous Czech science fiction writer who also wrote Solaris, which was adapted to film for the third time a few years ago, starring George Clooney. The fact that we have this book, plus many others by Lem, only proves what I've been saying all along; one of my predecessors must have been a huge sci-fi buff.
Anyway, the stories in The Cyberiad are not so much short stories as they are fables. Fables about robots that can construct almost anything demanded of them, and of the strange -- and invariably funny -- consequences that result from their actions. This book is, above all, funny, whether you're reading about the Femfatalatron built to deinfatuate a robot prince in love with a rival kingdom's princess or, my favorite, the machine that could make anything beginning with the letter n, including Nothing.
Actually, this book's author may have been insane. It reads like a combination of Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, and Dr. Seuss. It's funny and breaks whatever expectations you might have in the process of telling its stories, which invariably have some kind of lesson at the end.
A fabulous read overall; if you're looking for something light, funny, and fascinating, it's hard to go wrong with this one.
That covers it for now. I'm off on Friday, so I may not have time to put up another post before then, but I will if I can. Next week, the vlogs return!
Anyway, a word of warning: Because of my own natural inclinations, all three have a decidedly sci-fi bent. However, there is much more to these fellas than meets the eye.
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
This is a pretty complicated narrative, set in Bangkok, Thailand after the world has warmed and the seas have risen. It's a time of global upheaval as huge numbers of species, both plant and animal, have gone extinct and plague and famine are widespread. Civilization is hanging on by its fingernails only because of the rise of massive multinational conglomerates that specialize in genetic engineering; many extinct species are extinct only in their pure form, having been spliced with other species to create hardier hybrids. Those hybrids are then priced upwards by the corporations holding the patent on their genes, making them available only to the wealthy or larcenous. Energy is also scarce and is often obtained by the use of "kink-springs" -- a new technique of constructing wind-up metal springs that require tons of elbow grease to collect and store energy, which is then discharged to run everything from televisions to cross-country trains. Because of the kink-spring technology, the most precious form of energy is now kilocalories, stored in human bodies and discharged through physical work.
In the middle of all this is a "calorieman" -- an agent of one of those giant bioengineering corporations -- who's in Thailand illegally in order to sniff out any extinct plant or animal species that may have been resurrected in its pure form by famed Thai bioengineers. For example, plants in the nightshade family -- including chili peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes -- grow wild everywhere in Thailand, but are extinct everywhere else, and fetch a high price on the global market. Thailand's laws strictly forbid the import or export of biological specimens of any kind, so he manages to get wrapped up in a nest of intrigue when he falls into a failed venture attempting to develop a new kind of kink-spring, and ends up making a significant difference in the future of the Thai government, which just happens to benefit his employers.
Wandering throughout this story is a genetically-engineered Japanese geisha -- the windup girl of the title -- who holds a few secrets of her own, including what may be the eventual future of the human race.
As I said, complicated! But recommended.
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Another bioengineering-gone-wild tale, this book is brought to you by the author of A Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake, which is sort of the sequel to Year of the Flood. In this book, the apocalypse has already happened; in a society where biological engineering is rampant and easy enough to accomplish in a 15-minute bathroom session, a plague breaks loose and wipes almost everyone out. Those who are left have to figure out how to cope in a world which not only suffers from a scarcity of food, but also from an abundance of dangerous animals that have been much-changed from the ones we know now.
The story itself follows several survivors who are refugees from God's Gardeners, a sort of tree-hugging cult that consisted of both hippie rooftop gardeners and anticonsumerist shoe-bombers. They believe in the sanctity of all animal life and eat nothing but plants, but see nothing wrong with accomplishing their ideal world by the judicious application of a few pieces of C4.
It's a fairly slow-paced book, alternating between the flashbacks of two characters, Ren and Toby, and their present lives; things don't really start to get exciting until you're close to the end of the book. Still, it's a fascinating exercise in world-building, reading about the society Atwood imagines springing out of our penchant for plastic surgery and fiddling with our cell phones, and how quickly it can all go incredibly wrong.
Even more interesting is its relationship with Oryx and Crake. I said it's sort of a prequel, but the way both books are written, it really doesn't matter which you read first. The three central characters in Oryx don't show up often in Year of the Flood, but when they do, it's telegraphed clearly enough that you know that this is a missing part of the history of Crake and the end of the human race. And it's all written in Atwood's style, which is both stark and reflective; she really has a unique turn of phrase all her own.
Recommended for people with patience and a willingness to spend more time wandering through events instead of plunging through them; I loved it, but it's not for everyone.
The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
This is actually a re-read. It was one of my favorite books when I was younger, and it really was the last book I was expecting to find anywhere, much less right here where I work! No bioengineering here; it's a classic collection of short stories by a famous Czech science fiction writer who also wrote Solaris, which was adapted to film for the third time a few years ago, starring George Clooney. The fact that we have this book, plus many others by Lem, only proves what I've been saying all along; one of my predecessors must have been a huge sci-fi buff.
Anyway, the stories in The Cyberiad are not so much short stories as they are fables. Fables about robots that can construct almost anything demanded of them, and of the strange -- and invariably funny -- consequences that result from their actions. This book is, above all, funny, whether you're reading about the Femfatalatron built to deinfatuate a robot prince in love with a rival kingdom's princess or, my favorite, the machine that could make anything beginning with the letter n, including Nothing.
Actually, this book's author may have been insane. It reads like a combination of Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, and Dr. Seuss. It's funny and breaks whatever expectations you might have in the process of telling its stories, which invariably have some kind of lesson at the end.
A fabulous read overall; if you're looking for something light, funny, and fascinating, it's hard to go wrong with this one.
That covers it for now. I'm off on Friday, so I may not have time to put up another post before then, but I will if I can. Next week, the vlogs return!
Friday, November 5, 2010
Home page shortcuts
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!
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!
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