Meet Summon, our new catalog: The basics

Hello, there! I’ve come out of my long summer hibernation because there’s a big New Thing you need to know about.

This New Thing has been a long time in coming for a lot of reasons, including, well, it’s just been a complicated process getting all the parts working together.

If you go to http://library.gallaudet.edu, you’ll see it right away. No, not the new look -- I like it, myself, but as far as you’re concerned, it’s mostly cosmetic. I’m talking about Summon. It’s our new catalog, sort of.  You’ll see it named above the search box.  Below the search box, you’ll see a few options for focusing your searches, and a link to our good ol’ Classic Catalog too.

Here’s the thing about Summon: It’s big. It includes not only the usual books, DVDs, e-books, and streaming videos that we and other libraries in the Consortium offer, but also journal articles that you’d usually have to go to a database (like ProQuest, EBSCO Academic Search Complete, and PsycARTICLES) to find.

Summon is a unified search interface for most of our e-resources in addition to our usual stuff. So naturally, it runs a little differently. I thought it’d be a good idea to do a quick run-through of the basics. We’ll start with how results for books appear in Summon, then talk a little bit about journal articles.

Books

Suppose we need to find resources on bilingual families, leaving all the default options as they are -- those are the checkboxes you see underneath the search box on our home page, some of which are already checked, and others that are blank. Here’s what comes up:

 

I hope you noticed that the search brought up over 60,000 results! But fear not. On the left-hand side, you can see the usual options for narrowing your search: more-specific choices for what you want to appear on the list, which institution you’re interested in (I decided not to limit it to Gallaudet’s stuff), the types of content, and so on. There are a few more options below where I cut off the screenshot, like subject terms and publication dates, but you get the idea.

The really important part is that you can see right away exactly where to find specific items: not just which institution owns each item, but also whether it’s available, what the call number is, and which library -- or part of a library -- has it. Here’s a more complete example: 

 

So right away, you can see that our copy is available, the call number is 404.2 G76b, 2010, and you can find it in the General Stacks, downstairs. Pretty sweet! There’s also an e-book in the list, complete with a link -- in light-blue text above -- that I clicked so you can see that it’s working. We’ll cover e-books in more detail in a later post.

In some ways, Summon’s not as complicated as it looks, because it uses a neat trick: the Classic Catalog! Yep, the old bare-bones workhorse, which you may have thought died years ago, is still around, and both the title link above and the links to all the locations below it will take you to Classic Catalog records.

Journal articles

Journal articles work a little differently. Limiting the ‘bilingual families’ search to “ … articles from scholarly publications, including peer-review’ by clicking the relevant checkbox on the left side of the following picture yields this: 

 

You can see the full article citation for “Learning from bilingual family literacies” -- journal name (Language Arts), publication date (09/2012), volume and issue information (Volume 90, Issue 1), and even page numbers. Before we get to the “Full Text Online” link at the bottom, which I’m sure you’re slavering over, here’s a neat feature: 

 

Hovering your mouse pointer over the title link will bring up a preview! This will often include an abstract, so, in this case, there’s no need to get over to the article itself to find out what it’s about.

But suppose the abstract reveals that the article is probably something you want to look at in more depth. Clicking on the “Full Text Online” link for this particular article gets this: 

 

In the immortal words of Emeril LaGasse: BAM. If you’ve never heard of him, look him up in Summon!

It should be noted that if you already have the full citation of the article you want to find, our article finder will probably be a better bet. Summon and the article finder (known officially as 360 Link) are sibling products from the same company. The key difference is that, as far as finding specific articles are concerned, Summon is a searchlight, while 360 Link is a laser.

Concluding thoughts

This is the part of the post where I offer the customary caution. First, Summon doesn’t provide access to all of our e-resources. Also, the Summon catalog is still very much in beta, which means we’re still working out all the bugs -- for instance, it’s not always very clear whether or not you have access to a given full-text article or e-book -- so search with patience and care. One strategy you could use is start off with Summon, gather a few titles, then switch to Classic -- http://catalog.wrlc.org -- for a clearer picture of what’s available. This works best with finding books, e-books, and films.

Another strategy, of course, is using the big, giant, red Chat With Us! button at the top of the Summon search page during regular business hours. It’ll pop up a window that looks like this: 

 

Which, I hope, is self-explanatory.

Above all, always remember to:

• Be patient
• Get in touch with us before throwing your computer out the window

Good luck, and happy searching!

Some summer questions and free coffee

The end of the semester is inching ever closer. We're all suffused with fearful anticipation!

To that end, the Library, in its infinite beneficence (and you'd better believe it, buster), is offering free coffee starting this Sunday, April 25, through Wednesday, April 28, from 8-10 p.m. on the first floor by the Service Desk. We offer sweeteners of varying chemical compositions, creamer, stirrers, a little candy, and while they last, free travel mugs!

I'll admit something shameful: we actually offered coffee earlier this week, from Monday until Wednesday. It totally slipped my mind last week when I was writing my post then. Still, our coffee hour does not seem to have suffered in popularity thereby -- it seems we are not the only ones not getting much sleep in the face of finals week.

Speaking of not getting much sleep, I read The World According to Garp by John Irving. That book's a "yikes" all around. It's about T.S. Garp, a fellow who was raised by a woman who impregnated herself upon the carcass of a comatose (and terminal) soldier specifically so she would not have to deal with the father of her child while she raised him, a tactic that roils 1950s America: as she rears Garp, she writes an autobiography that almost becomes her own hagiography and carries her to worldwide fame. With such auspicious origins, it is no wonder that Garp, in a bildungsroman covered by most of the novel, grows up to become a highly-accomplished novelist himself. This part of the story is accompanied by a couple of framed narratives -- nearly the full text of one of Garp's own short stories is incorporated into the book about his life -- that bespeak a certain surrealist sentiment.

In any case, Garp grows up, falls in love, gets married, and fathers children of his own, only to have tragedy strike. Remembering the details of this particular tragedy still makes me shudder. Anyway, it's all very sexy and is a good read in general. Highly recommended, as long as you aren't prudish about some things.

At this point in the semester, I'm going to go ahead and answer a few Significant Questions floating around, mostly regarding the Library, graduation, and the summer.

I got an e-mail from the Library saying I have fines to pay before I can graduate. Is that true?
Yes, it is, especially if you're one of those who have managed to ride your balance into the upper atmosphere. You can't officially graduate without paying your fines. You can walk at graduation, sure, but that's little comfort if, when you're applying for jobs or graduate school, you need an official transcript, which you won't get. If you owe us a lot of money, don't be shy; we're not going to arrest you and throw you into the debtors' prison behind the Echo360 classroom downstairs. Come in and talk to us!

If I come in to pay my fines, what do I need to bring?
Your Gallaudet ID. I can't emphasize this enough; we do not accept driver's licenses, passports, military IDs, baby photos, or your mom's ultrasound. It has to be a current, valid Gallaudet ID. Also, bring cash or a checkbook. We understand that it's a pain in the neck, but we can't take plastic -- cash or check only.

What if I don't bring enough money and have to come back? Can I do that?
Yes, you can do that. You can pay down your balance on any schedule you'd like -- just pay it before graduation. Also, please try to stick to normal business hours, especially if you owe fines at other universities like George Mason or Georgetown -- the librarians that are usually around between 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. are pretty good at sorting these things out.

If I owe fines on books I got through CLS, how do I pay them? Do I have to go to those schools and pay there?
No, you don't. You can pay all of your fines right here.

Last question, I promise: What's up with the summer hours?
They're here! Scroll down to the bottom and take a look. One thing you'll notice are the hours for Reference Librarian service; there won't be a librarian here after 5 p.m. all summer, and weekends will also not have a librarian at all. This is an important thing to keep in mind! If you need help, come in before 5 p.m. Before 4, even, if you think you won't be the only one seeking help. If you still can't make it, get in touch with us via the contact information on this page to make arrangements to meet.

That about wraps it up for this session. No Question of the Week this week; there will also probably not be a post next week, as most of my time then will be consumed by the National Academic Bowl and time off. The following week, though, will see a quick preview of what you may be able to expect upon your return in the fall.

It's all about RefWorks!

Here comes Thanksgiving and papers and finals and ...

Well, we'll focus on that in just a minute. First, I just finished Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six following the Collapse of the United States of America by Brian Francis Slattery. Lengthy title notwithstanding, this book came to us after weeks of enthusiastic recommendations from various directions, and after reading it, I can understand why. At its root, it's a science-fiction (SF) novel, a genre which doesn't always get the respect it deserves in certain quarters. Some forget that fantastic writers like Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, HG Wells, Mary Shelley, Michael Chabon, and Kurt Vonnegut (to name just a few) were or are all SF authors. That's without including Isaac Asimov, who alone occupies 9 of the 10 major Dewey classifications (except the 100s, philosophy and psychology) and ... well, that's another post. The point is that the SF label isn't sufficient justification for dismissal.

Liberation is a good example of SF that works well as a piece of literature on a par with The Road or Oryx and Crake; as the title makes obvious, this is the story of an America crushed beneath the falling dollar and the flight of foreign investors, leading to the bankruptcy of the government and the total collapse of American society. This results in an landscape that's been peculiarly changed; after the initial flurry of riots and small wars dies down, people are more or less intact but incredibly poor, so they make do with the junk left over from their former lives.

Families take up residence in stripped station wagons and spin thread for textiles on wheels mounted on car axles, children gather junk from the shore and refashion various useful multitools to hawk on the streets, a single individual gathers all the information from around the country and sends it out in weekly digests via telegraph, fiber-optic cable, and the few remaining American-owned satellites, and other small-but-brilliant indications of the ingenuity and vibrance that's still left even after the death of the government. There's no real political organization larger than, say, Asheville, North Carolina, the last place on the continent south of Canada that's still free. Economically, though, most of the financial activity in the former United States is run by the Aardvark, a criminal-turned-king who rules from New York and runs most of the revived slave trade.

Enter the Slick Six: a band of thieves before the collapse who pulled off unimaginably huge heists using the members' strange skills at accounting, electronics, information dissemination, being charming, being smart, and killing people. One of them was shipped off to jail -- literally, on a prison ship somewhere in the North Atlantic -- before the end of society, and when he returns, he finds himself determined to bring the Slick Six back together and bring down the Aardvark and end slavery for the second time in American history. Whether he's successful or not, of course, is a matter of perspective. It's a narrative that reminds me strongly of Thomas Pynchon and other authors who can easily occupy an entire page with a single sentence that can take you halfway across the continent before you realize the subject's been changed.

It's highly recommended, especially if you're worried about the economy. It's pure speculation, of course, but it's still a terrific read!

After that lengthy synopsis and brief digression on the nature of SF and its awful treatment at the hands of literary snobs, let's focus on something more practical, especially as the semester winds down: RefWorks. I'm going to do this all in a Q&A format, mostly because I'm tired of writing long narrative posts and because there are several questions common to each student encounter with RefWorks.

What is RefWorks?
Why, that's simple. It's a bibliographic content management system!

By which I mean, of course, that it can store all the citation information from the articles, books, Web sites and other sources you come across while you're doing your research, organize all those articles, and then automatically create a "Works Cited" list for you to insert in your paper or project. Or a "References" list or whatever else is prescribed by the style manual you're using (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

Cue heavenly glow. Cue angelic choir. That's what I see in the faces of most of the students whom I introduce to RefWorks when I mention that last. It's crazy. I'll explain more about that later; suffice it to say that RefWorks does a lot of work for you while you're researching.

How do I find it?
Go to library.gallaudet.edu and look in the middle box in the top row on the page with a sort of burgundy/maroon-colored header bar that says "Research Help." You should see a link third from the bottom that says "RefWorks." Click on it.

Next, you'll see another page, this time with a bunch more links. This is the Library-RefWorks page. To go straight to RefWorks, just click the link at the top, the one saying "Link to RefWorks." However, if it's your first time, I do strongly suggest that you read the rest of the page.

Why? Well, we have two videos created by Jane Rutherford, one of our Instruction & Reference Librarians, that walk you through the fundamentals of using RefWorks; both videos are identical, one just has voice added. They are terrifically useful, and having them means I can skip the details here.

You'll also see a list of "Import Guides" along the right-hand side of the screen. These are important for two reasons. First, they relate to one of RefWorks' most useful functions, which is the ability to automatically transfer all citation information from the database articles of your choice right into RefWorks, saving you all the time it'd take to type a single reference into the online form provided by RefWorks. This is awesome.

Unfortunately, not all databases are created equal; each one transfers citations into RefWorks by different methods. This is the second reason why the import guides are important: they all include step-by-step instructions for getting citations into RefWorks for each database (including our catalog, ALADIN Discovery). Because of that, this is one window you'll want to keep open while you're doing your research.

Do I really need to create an account?
Yup. It's free, doesn't ask for much personal information, takes very little time, and is definitely worth it.

Okay, I kind of get what you're saying. But ... how do I really use it?
It varies according to your needs. Here's an example of the research process I'd use for articles by themselves:

1. Open RefWorks, sign in, and keep it open the entire time. Just leave it alone
2. Open the Library's RefWorks page (with the links to all the import guides on it) and leave that open, too
3. Get started on researching by picking a database
   
4. After deciding which database you want to use, go back to the list of import guides and open the one for the database you're using. Leave it open while you're searching.
5. Search and find whatever articles you'll need in that database
   
6. Follow the instructions on the import guide to get all the citations you want to use into RefWorks
7. Once the citations are in RefWorks, you get to decide what you want to do with the citations:
1. Leave them where they are (RefWorks puts them into the 'Last Imported' folder)
   
2. Put them into a folder specifically for this topic (you can create it before you start researching or do it at this point, using the Folders menu in the RefWorks menu bar)

For, say a book that doesn't come from a Consortium library (remember, RefWorks can work with information from ALADIN Discovery) or a Web site or, really, anything else, you'll need to create the reference itself. It's less of a pain than you'd think in RefWorks, though:

1. In RefWorks, open the menu named References and select "Add a new reference"
2. You'll see a big form full of what seems like hundreds of blank fields. Don't worry about those -- just look at the top of the form
1. Make sure that the right style is selected in View fields used by: drop-down next to the "Save Reference" button
   
2. If you want to put the reference in a specific folder, select that in the next drop-down
   
3. Now you'll need to figure out the Ref type. Fortunately, RefWorks' options are pretty straightforward; pick the one that applies
3. When you pick the reference type, the form will automatically reload with green checkmarks next to certain fields.
   
4. Fill in as many of the green-checked fields as possible
1. Those are the fields that will be used in whatever reference type and style you picked
2. If the information for a specific field simply isn't available (if your book has an author but no editors, for example), don't worry. A green check mark next to the field doesn't mean it's required, just recommended.
   
5. Once you've filled in as much as you can fill in, click on "Save Reference"
   
6. That's it.

Now for the grand finale! After you're done with all your researching, you can now create a reference list for your paper:

1. Click on Bibliography in the Menu bar
2. Pick your style (APA 6th Edition, maybe)
3. Pick the format you want the list to be in (usually "Word for Windows (2000 or later)")
4. Pick the folder you want the references to come from
5. Click on "Create Bibliography"
6. A page will come up, saying something like "Formatting ... " Just wait.
7. Then a download window will pop up. Save it to your computer first.
8. Open it and make sure it's complete and nothing's gone horribly wrong (computers can be funny, huh? Real funny)
9. Copy and paste away to your heart's content.
   

Wow. It really does make a reference list for your paper.
Yup. You okay?

Hello?

Wow.
Hello?

Well, anyway, it's a fantastic tool to have. It removes a lot of the strain involved in keeping track of large numbers of articles while you're working on your project or paper. And we provide it for free!

The only real downside to using RefWorks is the time it takes to learn a new way of doing things, figure out the interface, and get used to it all. Fortunately, it pays off big in the end.

If you have any further questions about RefWorks or could use some more in-depth training, feel free to get in touch with us to set up an appointment -- whether through e-mail at library.help@gallaudet.edu, via IM through library.gallaudet.edu, or by just plain old droppin' by.

That ends this week. This blog will be taking Thanksgiving off -- it could really use some turkey and stuffing -- so we'll see you again on December 4!

---

Question of the Week
What are your hours over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend?
Here they are:

Tuesday, November 24: 8 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Wednesday, November 25: 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Thursday, Thanksgiving Day: Closed
Friday, November 27: Closed
Saturday, November 28: 1 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Sunday, November 29: 12 p.m. - 12 a.m.

a word about searching

Friday the 13th. Seems more appropriate for Halloween, but since that's on the 31st, I suppose that's out.

Let's see. I just finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, the fascinating mind behind The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Again, there's sort of a historical basis in World War II, although the influence of the war is, of course, more strongly felt in Kavalier & Clay. It's the story of a pair of Jewish cousins -- one of whom, Kavalier, is a Czech refugee from the Prague ghetto in the earliest days of the war -- who become the creative team behind some of the most popular comic-book series of all time. The novel chronicles Clay's struggle with his own private issues while Kavalier ranges across the world in an effort to exorcise his own demons, only to end up losing almost everything and everyone who matters to him. Love blooms and offspring get involved, and a surprise twist at the end leaves you wondering what happens next ...

It's a fascinating, well-written book, full of terrific details and absorbing episodes (the bar-mitzvah scene, where Kavalier moonlights as a stage magician only to have his show interrupted by a real-life supervillain, is a page-turner par excellence). It does run fairly long at somewhere between 530-550 pages, but it's worth every paper cut.

Now, I promised you some real meat. Let's start with with the second-most fundamental aspect of research (the most fundamental aspect is, of course, the research question).

The keywords. Keywords are, basically, the words you use to search for stuff in a database or search engine, like ProQuest or Google. However, most databases work differently from Google. I can't emphasize this enough. Most people just find a database and enter any old term or phrase, like, "How many deaf people live in the United States?"

First, most databases won't look for the answer to the question; they'll look for articles that have any of the words that appear in the question. You'll get 22,363 articles that have "states," "live," "people," "the," "united," "how," "deaf," "many," and "in" in the text of each article. Not helpful.

That's why keywords are important -- they isolate specific concepts and allow you to put them together in a way that gets you what you want. Most people already understand this, so they sit down and start entering any old word. While that strategy sounds just as good a way to start as any, I see a lot of people staring at ProQuest or America: History & Life with no idea what to search for, because they've used keywords that sound good, but now can't remember which ones they've already used, or can't figure out what other keywords might work.

Try this instead:

• Get a blank sheet of paper
• Write your topic across the top -- "Colonialism in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island," for example.
  
• Take the important ideas out and split them up into different lists thus:
• Colonialism
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• Treasure Island
• Grab a thesaurus or find one online -- http://thesaurus.reference.com is a good one. We also have some more specialized thesauri for certain academic disciplines; ask at the Service Desk for help finding one if you need it.
  
• Use the thesaurus to figure out synonyms that might work. Although old Robert Louis and Treasure Island are fairly unambiguous, "colonialism" might have a few different synonyms:
  
• Imperialism
• Manifest destiny
• Expansionism
• Come up with a few different ways that these words could go together, using:
• AND (if you want both words in the article)
• OR (if you want one or the other of two words)
• Quotation marks (for exact phrases)
• Truncation marks (also known as wild-card searches; look for a link to something like "Search Help" in the database you're using -- it'll tell you if you can use asterisks, question marks, or other punctuation marks to find variations on the keywords you want)
• Parentheses (so you can group words together and make smaller searches within the larger search)
  
• Thus:
  
• "Robert Louis Stevenson" AND (imperialism or colonialism)
• "Treasure Island" AND (imperial* or colon*)
• In this case, the asterisks are truncation marks, which means the database will look for words like imperial, imperialism, imperialist, colony, colonial, colonialism, colonialist, colonization, colonized ... well, and so on
  
• Play around with different combinations
  
• Search.
• Search.
• Search.
• ... and search some more.
  

The last four aren't jokes. This takes time, effort, and some fancy mental footwork. It's not easy. You'll have to search over and over again, often with tiny variations on the last search, fine-tuning the results you get back. Sometimes you hit a wall and have no idea where to go next.

I'll tell you where to go: the Library. IM us through the chat widget on library.gallaudet.edu, e-mail us through library.help@gallaudet.edu, or -- this is usually the best way to get things done quickly -- come on in and ask for help at the Service Desk. We're all old hands at searching through databases and are always, always happy to help out.

Really, searching and finding information for your topic is probably one of the hardest parts of working on a paper or project, second only to actually writing your paper or putting your project together. Part of this is because it becomes difficult to keep track of all the articles you've found and want to use; most students tend to print out every single article, write the important information they need for references on top of the first page, then lug all of it around.

There's an easier way: RefWorks. It's awesome; I'll go into more detail about it next week, so be sure to tune in.

In the meantime, enjoy your weekend! I hear it may be the last warm-ish one we get ...

---

Question of the Week
Why can you only check out reserve items for up to 2 hours?
Why is the sky blue? Why is the sun yellow? Why does the Planck constant add up to 4.13566733(10) x 10^-15 eVs? Well, that last one has an answer, so scratch that.

All facetiousness aside, though, reserve items have a time limit because that's the nature of reserve items -- they're on reserve because your professor wants them to be available to you when you need them. It's hard to accomplish that if we allow any students to check out a reserve item for more than 2 hours. That's also why those items can't leave the Library while they're on reserve. Everyone in a given class needs to have a fighting chance at those items, and the only way to accomplish this is to place some restrictions on their use and apply them evenly to everyone in the course.

This way, if a student really needs her professor's dissertation for class the next day, but it's unavailable, she can at least check ALADIN Discovery and see if it's due back soon enough for her to stick around and wait for it to be returned. In fact, I've seen some students check ALADIN Discovery, see that one of their classmates has checked out the book or movie they need, then literally search the Library for those classmates so they can ask to join the other student and use the item without needing to wait until the other student's done. It almost always works out pretty well.

A good way to make searching our catalog easier

I feel like I'm overdosing on nonfiction a little bit -- I don't ordinarily read as much as I have in the past few weeks -- so I'm going to throw off the shackles of fact and history.

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon has precisely none of either. Pynchon's one of those authors that I've always kind of felt I should read at least once. His Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49 come up fairly often in my conversations with fellow bibliomaniacs, so I figured that this was a good opportunity to give him a test drive with Vineland.

Vineland is the story of a woman named Frenesi Gates (no relation to our Diana) and her evolution from gorgeous radical to gorgeous filmmaker to gorgeous narc to gorgeous mother. You get the idea. The book is also about quite the handful of auxiliary characters: her hippie ex-husband, Valley Girl daughter, straight-arrow DEA lover, former ninja girlfriend, and her former ninja girlfriend's current ninja boyfriend. The smaller stories of Billy Barf and the Vomitones (a surfer-rock band), the Wayvone Mob family, a roving cult of ghosts suffering from severe karmic imbalances, a few visits from aliens and Godzilla, a television-addicted DEA agent with marvelous hair, and the Emerald Triangle's pot-growing underpinnings are interwoven throughout the larger plot, which takes the form of a series of reminiscences that hop all over the country and make it as far as Japan.

It's pretty outlandish, but the basic plot outline is this: Frenesi, having worked undercover for the DEA for 20 years, setting up drug stings, has vanished. Her lover, a high-ranking DEA agent under Reagan, has a slight insanity problem, and immediately reacts by invading the small town of Vineland, California, where Frenesi's ex-husband and daughter reside. This forces Frenesi's ex-husband, who hasn't seen her since their daughter Prairie (I told you he was a hippie) was a baby, to send Prairie away with the Vomitones until, quite by accident, she runs into her mother's former ninja girlfriend at a Wayvone Mob wedding. This sets off much of the story, as both women disappear into a commune of fighting Buddhist nuns somewhere in the Sierras and Prairie learns more and more about her mother's history and gets to know her through the stories her old friends tell about her. The book culminates in Frenesi's reappearance at a family reunion and the DEA agent's abduction by a deeply weird tribe of local Indians.

Could you follow any of that? I barely could. It's a super-entertaining read, though, which reminds me of a number of other writers I've enjoyed, like Tom Robbins, Neal Stephenson, Michael Chabon, David Foster Wallace ... well, the list goes on. Pick it up sometime and enjoy the ride!

Now that I'm off that ride, let's talk a little bit about ALADIN Discovery, our new online catalog system.

I've had a few weeks to get used to it -- even librarians have to adjust to new things -- and I've developed a habit that seems to make things much, much easier to find.

Since we set up the new catalog, people have asked how they're supposed to make their search more specific. There's only one box to enter their keywords, and this leaves them with two choices:

1. Figure out how to get the one box to include all the information they need to narrow the search down to the exact book they want, OR;
2. Just throw what they can think of in there and then sit back, slightly stunned at the sheer number of books they'll have to search through.

As it turns out, there's a third choice, and it's one that I'm making increasingly often. Check out the example to the right.

You'll see it on the far right-hand side of the results page. It's swiftly becoming the first place I go when I encounter a long list of search results even after selecting 'Gallaudet' from the Select Library drop-down menu. The number of results I got from the search I performed here, for instance, was about 70. Not bad, but who has time at this stage in the Fall semester to go looking through 70 items? However, if I were looking for a movie, clicking on the "Movie" link in the above list under Format cuts it right down to 6 items.

If I were looking for a book, it'd be time to check out the other possibilities. One of my favorites is by author. This has turned out to be one of the most useful options when someone comes up and knows only the title (which is usually something very generic, like "Land" -- there is a book called Land, which is all sorts of fun to find) and author; I just find the list of authors that appears in the right-hand column and click on "more," then scan the list until I find the author I'm looking for, click on that, and there it is.

Other ways you can use this listing of options (called "facets" in Librarianese):

• A general subject in a specific part of the world (say, child prostitution in Southeast Asia)
• A topic relating to a specific time period (telecommunication devices before 1934)
• Specific applications of words that are used in a number of contexts ("play" as a therapeutic methodology)
• Common forms that can cross genres (Detective fiction instead of histories of criminology or the biography of a detective)
• Recent works with the latest theories or best practices (Reviews of pharmaceutical intervention in the treatment of schizophrenia published within the last 3 years)

You get the idea. Those facets are incredibly useful and save a lot of time from going down the drain of repeated search attempts or slow scrutiny of pages and pages of search results. They make the search process feel more like a process, proceeding from the initial search to the first facet you see that will be useful, to the second (although usually you get what you need with the first facet), and so on until you find what you're looking for -- or don't, in which case you need to start over, but with a better idea of what keywords to enter next time. Things also tend to go a lot faster with this method, which comes in handy when you've got a slightly wild-eyed student standing on the other side of the counter with five minutes left before class.

That wraps it up for this week. Enjoy your weekend!

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Question of the Week
I was looking for a book on the catalog earlier this week, and I noticed that some of the results that came up for that book said "electronic resource." What does that mean?
Basically, that means the book is available as an e-book. In other words, it's totally online and can be accessed from anywhere.

However, there are a couple of catches. The first catch is that those books usually can't be downloaded. You can't save them to your computer. You can, however, set up a personal account that will enable you to save your favorite books so you can find them again, and even set bookmarks to keep your place. It's pretty neat ... but it does lead us to the second catch: Even if you have a personal account, you still need to go through ALADIN in order to access your books.

For example, one of our biggest e-book providers is eBrary, Inc. They have a website where you can go and log in and check out their library outside of Gallaudet. Unfortunately, they'll charge you for the privilege, which trips up a lot of people who head home somewhere off campus, log in to ebrary.com, and try to start reading the same book they've been reading here on campus; they won't be able to get in. The reason for this is simple: there are no free accounts on ebrary.com. You have to either pay for access yourself or be a member of an institution (like the Library) that does.

In order to take advantage of the Library's access (and we have quite a lot of it), you will need to go through ALADIN. You'll have to log in, find the e-book in our catalog, and then access the book from there. This is because when you log in to ALADIN and then access the e-book, our network will tell eBrary that you're part of Gallaudet and they'll let you in without a problem. Then you can log in to your personal account and you'll find everything just like you left it.

Databases, part 1: How to get in from off-campus

I recently got a question about access to our databases, especially off-campus, so let's talk about that a little bit today.

See, every once in a while (but especially during summer and semester breaks), a student or faculty/staff member will be off campus and decide that they need an article from, let's say, the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. They go to our Web site, library.gallaudet.edu, and click on the "ALADIN" link in the heading of the "Shortcuts to ALADIN" box.

Suddenly, they see something unexpected:

They're taken by surprise because they haven't seen this screen before, so they hit the Meebo Library chat widget on our home page, asking if they've done something wrong or if we've changed anything. The answer to both questions is "No." Generally speaking, the reason for this reaction is just that they've only ever used the Library's online resources while on campus. Off campus, though, is a different story.

There are a lot of reasons for this, which I'll explain in later posts (sorry, I'm feeling too Fridayish to get technical), but the main one is just that our contracts with the people who own our research databases require that we limit those databases to Gallaudet people only. When you're on campus, the system automatically knows you're okay because you're using a Gallaudet connection, so it lets you in seamlessly. When you're off-campus, though, the system has no idea who you are, so you have to tell it.

And that's why we have the login screen. Just enter your last name, your ID number or your Library barcode, and pick "Gallaudet" from the Institution: drop-down menu. If you don't know your ID number and don't have a Library barcode (shame on you -- get over here and ask for one), you can log on to Bison, go into "Self Service" in the sidebar on the left-hand side, click on "Personal Information," then "Personal Information Summary." You'll see your ID number on the very first line under the big blue "Personal Information" header.

Anyway, once you've logged in, you're basically as good as gold. It all proceeds just like it would if you were on campus.

Short post today, and it's basically one big Question of the Week, so we'll skip that. Also, since we're closed next Friday for Independence Day weekend, next week's post will be up on Thursday. Have a good weekend!

Library equipment

One of the nicest things about working at the Gallaudet University Library is that it's full of much more stuff than most people realize. Rooms of stuff, in fact.

For example, I sometimes see students coming in, taking a look at the public computers by the Service Desk, seeing that every single computer is taken, and walking right back out -- until I let them know about the Deaf Library Study Center and room 1404. Both rooms have additional computers for public use, but many students are not aware of them because they're tucked into a couple of the first floor's quieter corners.

1404, for instance, is out by the reference materials, near the windows facing the Peet side of the building. There are several computers in there, including one equipped with ZoomText, which magnifies the computer screen for those with visual disabilities, and a few TVs, DVD players, and VCRs. The interesting thing is that the room also contains an international VCR (which plays PAL format in addition to NTSC, which is used here in the United States) and a region-free DVD player (which means it can play any commercial DVD produced anywhere in the world, instead of just Region 1 DVDs for the United States). This means that we are not limited to US-only tapes and DVDs, which enhances the accessibility of our collection.

The Deaf Library Study Center, located down the hall opposite the women's restroom on the east side of the first floor (the side facing JSAC), is a bit less utilitarian. In addition to the computers and TV/VCR/DVD players, there is a 55-inch LCD HDTV hooked up to cable! That thing is beautiful.

The room also has some comfortable chairs and small tables that are ideal for curling up and studying in relative peace and quiet, and the TV/VCR/DVD players are set up in semi-private booths. I've seen more than one couple watching sob-stories with snacks in one of those booths -- and have been drawn by the hooting of college students cheering on their favorite team on the 55-incher. Both are totally fine; we welcome all Gallaudet students, faculty and staff, and encourage the respectful use of our facilities.

Outside of those two rooms, much of the equipment we have is focused on providing access for people with visual disabilities and making the academic experience more comfortable. One of the public computers in the open area of the first floor is also equipped with the ZoomText magnification software. In addition, there is a print magnifier available on the first floor, by the window just past 1404.

We also have headphones, remotes, and a small electronic handheld magnifier, all of which are available to borrow on reserve for two hours maximum. Study tables and carrels (like tables, but with little walls for more privacy and less distraction) are distributed around both the first floor and the basement. Those are freely available, first come, first served, to anyone who needs them. We also have even more TV/DVD/VCRs scattered around the first floor by the windows.

Ah, and the couches. There are several on both the first floor and basement, although those in the basement are less visible and better for relaxing with a good book (or stressing out with a textbook), although I have certainly found the odd catnapper from time to time.

Then there's the photocopy center. We have two copiers and a scanner, which is hooked up to its own computer, contained by a low counter right next to the Service Desk. You'll notice it by the bright red sign hanging over it. The interesting thing is that although making copies costs money -- 10 cents per page -- scanning is totally free. This way, you can scan whatever you need reproduced, save the image to your thumbdrive or e-mail it to yourself, and print it out from your computer at home for free.

The last thing -- and this is to make sure you keep reading to the end -- is the vending. We have a snack machine downstairs, along with a Coke vending machine. We do allow people to eat and drink in the Library, although we do ask that you avoid Coke showers and Chee-To confetti (in other words, don't make a mess and try to avoid damaging Library materials).

In general, we try to have a little something to meet everyone's needs, varied though those needs may be. Above all else, if you're just plain not sure, ask. There's always someone at the Service Desk who can either answer your question or help you find the person who can.

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Question of the Week
Last week, I tried to find information on deafness and how Deaf people see better than hearing people, but the Library didn't have anything on that topic! Why did that happen?
The Library tries to be as comprehensive as possible when it comes to collecting deaf-related materials, in addition to meeting the needs of the student population with the general collection. That said, there are three possible reasons why you couldn't find anything:

1) Something may have gone awry with the search process -- maybe there was a synonym (a word that means the same thing as what you're looking for, like "eyesight" and "visual acuity" are synonyms) you didn't know could be used or you typed a little too quickly and misspelled a word without realizing it. The librarians here can help you with that and will usually be able to find what you're looking for. If not, it may be for the next two reasons.

2) Nobody's written about your topic. There hasn't been a study that focuses on whether the percentage of deaf people with 20/15 vision is higher than the percentage of hearing people with 20/15 vision. There may be some studies that come close, such as recent research by the University of Rochester that found slight differences in visual perception among deaf people, hearing people, and CODAs. Even though the idea that deaf people see better sounds as if it could be true, and is accepted as true by the deaf community, it isn't necessarily supported by research -- yet.

3) The conclusion you're looking for isn't stated explicitly. Frequently when doing research, you won't find anything that's clear-cut on one side or another. You'll need to read the article and make sure you understand the conclusion before you can say definitively that this article concludes something one way or another. For example, the University of Rochester study mentioned above concluded that deaf people process what they see a little differently from hearing people, but found little evidence that this difference is "better" or "worse" than how hearing people use their eyes.

If you can't find anything related to your topic, the reason is most likely one of these three. Also, don't forget, the Library tries to collect as many deaf-related materials as possible, but there is a lot out there. The ALADIN Catalog will tell you when an item has been ordered, but we buy materials from tiny, hard-to-find publishers from all over the world. Because of that, things need time to work their way through the system, especially materials from places as far-flung as Norway, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh.

Again, if all else fails, ask a librarian!

Finding journal articles: Part two

Let's do a little exercise: Your professor gives you the following citation in your required readings:

Ledford, K.F. (1995). German lawyers and the state in the Weimar Republic. Law and History Review, (13)2. 317-349.

Where do we go from here? Remember last week's blog post? The screengrab to the right is the same as last week, so take a look to refresh yourself. Here, you already know what journal you want, so you don't need to check ProQuest Research Library, Ebscohost Academic Search Premiere, "Databases by Subject," or "Databases by Title." That means this week, we will be focusing on Gallaudet e-Journals.

In this case, you already know what journal you want -- Law and History Review -- but you're not sure what database it's available in, so you go all the way to the right in the screengrab above to "Gallaudet e-Journals."

"Gallaudet e-Journals" is our listing of all the journals we subscribe to electronically; it's a good way to narrow down your search even further. You just search for the name of the journal, and then you'll see whether we have it, and if we do, how many years' worth of issues we have, and what database it's available through.

So in the case of our example above, you can see the name of the journal is Law and History Review. Just enter "law and history review" into the search box et voila! It hath appeared (picture to the left).

Sometimes it can be hard to understand an e-Journal record. Let's take a look at the e-Journal record for Law and History Review.

Here you'll see a listing of the databases it's available in, how far back they go in each database, and whether or not we may have full-text access. For example, we see that you can access articles from Law and History Review in JSTOR Arts and Sciences 4 between the years of 1983 and 2005 and in LexisNexis Academic any time from 1996 on. The article we're looking for is from 1995, so JSTOR it is.

Click on that, and a little box pops up (to the right):

You can use the citation above to fill in the blanks: Year: 1995, Volume: 13, Issue: 2, Start Page: 317. Click on GO -- hitting "Enter" won't work -- and you're there!

This concludes our little tutorial on database research. Was it as good for you as it was for me?

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Question of the Week
A lot of times when I have to pick up books at the Service Desk, the person at the desk has to ask me some questions before they can get me the book I need. Why don't they just look on the shelf?
Here at the Library, we have three different kinds of shelves that exist for only one purpose: to hold books for people to pick up. You know about one -- CLS -- but the other two can be confusing for librarians without asking some questions.

The "hold" shelf is for items that you want to check out but can't right away for whatever reason. Maybe you came to the Library to check out a book, but found out you forgot your ID at home. Instead of putting the book down and hoping someone else doesn't get to it first, you can ask us to hold it for you, and then once you find your ID, you can come back and pick it up. We generally hold books for 7 days, maximum.

Bear in mind: you have to pick up the item you reserve, with your ID.

The "reserve" shelf, on the other hand, is for faculty who want to have books, movies, or other items available for their courses. Students in those courses can come in and check out those items for up to two hours in the library. There's a reason for this: we usually only have one copy of the item the instructor wants, and sometimes when we don't have it, the instructor brings in his or her own copy. All students need to have access to that item, so we put it on reserve so it's always available for them. This way, nobody needs to worry about one student checking out our only copy of Ghosts of Washington for a month, preventing other students from being able to take advantage of this resource.

In sum, the "hold" shelf is for you to check out personally; the "reserve" shelf is for your instructor -- for you to use in your course.