Indiana University East

The IU East library is designed to be your information center but there may be times when you can’t make it to campus.  When that happens the library’s website is the perfect place to get started on your research.  

If you can’t get what you need on our website you might need to use other websites.  Anyone can put anything on the internet so here are a few hints to make sure you get good information.  Check websites for:

• Authority – are the author and sponsor identified?  is the author qualified?  is the sponsor identified and reputable?
• Up-to-date – does the site tell when it was last updated?  was the update recent?
• Accuracy – is the information given reliable & error free?
• Bias – what is the site’s objective?  is it designed to sway opinion?  is it advertising something?
• Citations – does the site say where it got its information?

Some examples of bad sites that look good are: California’s Velcro Crop Under Challenge, History of the Fisher-Price Airplane, AIDS FACTS and Coalition to Ban DHMO Dihydrogen Monoxide.  Take a look and see if you can figure out what’s wrong with them. 

Remember, if you aren’t sure you can always ask a librarian.

Don’t forget to cite your sources!

Beck, Susan. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: or, Why It’s a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources.  1997.  http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html

Schrock, Kathy. Kathy Schrock’s ABC’s of Web Site Evaluation. 2007. http://kathyschrock.net/abceval/

Hi, this is Matt Dilworth. I do reference here in the library.

I’d like to write about a tool the library just upgraded – Ebrary, a database for electronic books. Do you use a Kindle, or Google Books? This is kind of similar. You can get into Ebrary from the library’s main page – click on eBooks from the left-hand menu, then choose Ebrary.

When you search for a book, you get a list in order of how relevant Ebrary thinks they are to what you typed. But in this new version, in the table of contents, chapters are now ranked according to relevance as well as whole books. You can even look at the results screen by chapter rather than by book – cutting out a lot of aimless page-turning before you get to the good stuff!

From the InfoTools menu, you can copy, print, search something from the book with Google or Wikipedia, translate a chunk of text, or get a definition of a word. Ever wonder what an obscure French phrase in the middle of a passage meant, like Ceux qui rient le vendredi, pleureront le dimanche? Or roll your eyes when an author trots out a word like hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliaphobia? One click will let you in on the secret, too. One of the many benefits of reading online!

With an account (it’s free), you can highlight, write notes in the margins, and the like – just like a real book. Better still, you can email those highlights and notes to friends or professors – it’s like photocopying and passing around a page of notes, but without paying for it!

The Ebrary Unity Reader gives you a few more options. Just click on the Ebrary Reader button and it opens (or installs, if you’ve never used it before – don’t worry, it’s painless). One of the coolest new functions of this Reader is speech – just select what you want read to you, and then click the speech tab on the upper right. The speech function is great for people with vision impairment, or muti-taskers who want their eyes free. There are only two voices now (“Bob” and “Alice”), but more are promised. Books that read themselves! What’s next, cities on clouds?

Like many, I get impatient when my computer doesn’t respond quickly. However, there are things you can do to improve your computer’s functionality. Every computer should have a virus protection program installed. If your computer is new, you may still be running the virus protection program that came with your computer. However, if your trial has expired, or you aren’t using anything, then IU students can go to http://iuware.iu.edu to down load free software. Under the Security link on the left, choose, Antivirus: Symantec Antivirus Programs.  Choose the program from there that best suits your needs.

Another thing that interferes with your computer’s optimization is using web sites that heavily rely on Java. You can open your Control Panel, then open the Java setting. Click on the “Settings” button, under Temporary Internet Files. Click on the “Delete Files…” button. Make sure both “Applications and Applets” and “Trace and Log Files” are selected. Hit “OK”.

Many people are unaware that when they visit a web page, everything on that page gets downloaded to their computer’s cache. This includes graphics and text. If you visit a lot of web pages, you could understand how your cache can fill up quickly. To clean this out, go to Internet Options, under Tools in Internet Explorer. Click on the “Delete” button under Browsing History, under the General Tab. Select “Delete Files…” under Temporary Internet Files. In Mozilla Firefox, choose Options, under Tools. Under the Privacy Tab, click on the “Clear Now…” button. Make sure “Cache” is selected, and then hit the “Clear Private Data Now” button.

Under both browsers, you do have the option to delete cookies. Cookies can be good as they can be used to remember settings on web sites you use a lot. For example, I want my cable company’s lineup to come up when I go to the TV Guide web site. So, I have a cookie set. If I clean out all of my cookies, then I need to reset preferences on all of my web sites. However, some cookies are dangerous. They monitor web sites that you have visited. There are also web sites that download adware to your computer. These sites monitor where you visit on the web and show you ads of products they think you will buy. Adware can really slow down your computer and even worse, generate a constant stream of pop-ups. A great program to run that will get rid of Adware is Ad-Aware by Lavasoft.  You can download it for free at http://www.lavasoft.com/.  Another program that I like is Spybot Search and Destroy which can be downloaded free from http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html.  Both of these will detect unwanted adware and unwanted cookies and leave legitimate cookies alone.

Here’s to safe computer surfing!

Wow, it’s the middle of the semester already, half-way through to Finals! Just in case you have missed our new resources in the library, check-out the IUE LibGuides. We’ve created course and subject guides to help direct your research and help you find the scholarly resources important for your work. The guides pull together Campus Library resources and valid websites to expand your learning. Find tutorials, organizations, and tools to help you be a “Smartie”.   A course LibGuide is a one-stop shop for library information access and relevant resources for your course research needs.   Librarians identify resources to help, you, the student succeed. Smart students use IUE LibGuides .

Good News, link to IU with your mobile, smartphone, or i-phone.  Use m.iu.edu on your mobile device. Search IU Libraries, Knowledge Base, and IUScholarWorks.  Receive IT Alerts and Campus Alerts, find emergency numbers for your campus. Find news, classifieds, and Oncourse updates.  IU Mobile provides brief quick facts from your phone. Smart people use IU Mobile.

We have new databases this semester to help in your research needs: Oxford Art and Oxford Premium Reference Online.  Also, look for a librarian in your Oncourse classes through the new Librarian roles.  Another research tool  available for a trial-year is EBSCO’s Research Starters: Sociology.  Grove’s Music Online, a music reference  e-resource and  Naxos, a recorded music site is available for music students and others. The School of Humanities and Social Sciences co-sponsors Grove’s Music Online. Be Smart use library resources.

Marcia Sloan, interlibrary loan specialist, or any of the IUE library staff is happy to aid you in getting books and articles from other libraries so feel free to ask for help.

If you need a book that is not available at this library but is at another Indiana University, select REQUEST DELIVERYon the right side of the IUCat page.  You must be signed into IUCat to get this screen.   Be sure to select EAST as the campus to which you want the book to be delivered.  You will be notified by your IU email at noon of the day it is received.

For a copy of an article or any book not available (checked-out or not owned) in IUCat please fill out the ILLiad form (this link can also be found on our home page).  Just click on “First time user”, register and fill out the form.  You only need to fill this form out once and then add the article citation or book information to the form.  Be sure to click on the “submit” button for each request.  When the article is listed in one of our databases the   Red Hot Quest button will appear, click on it and you’ll be sent to ILLiad where all the information will autofill in the form.

All requests require that you follow the copyright guidelines.  As an IU EAST student, staff or faculty you may borrow materials from libraries outside Indiana University.

You will need to allow 7 or 10 working days for your request to be filled.  You may check to see if the item has arrived by calling 973-8309 or by asking at the Circulation Desk.  We will either call you or email you when your request has arrived.

Welcome to the new blog for your Campus Library! Because libraries contain a wealth of diverse perspectives on a variety of topics it seems fitting to have many perspectives and ideas represented in this blog. Therefore, writing our weekly blog entries will be rotated among our seven (lucky 7!) library staff members. I might also ask some avid campus library users to blog for us occasionally, just to mix-it-up a bit. We may feature a reflection on some interesting reading or media, an introduction to new or unique resources, or anecdotes about how information was used personally or professionally.

As the Library Director at Indiana University East it is my pleasure to start the blog rolling. Although I have journaled, I haven’t blogged, so being of the librarian persuasion I of course researched the optimal length for a blog entry. There seems to be no consensus on length but I did find an interesting statistic. According to calculations using the “Site Meter” (see reference below) I have 96 seconds to convey everything I want you to read before you leave this page. Darren Rowse compiled an interesting list of what can be accomplished in 96 seconds or less, and you can find that list here:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/03/17/how-long-do-your-readers-stay-at-your-blog-length-of-stay-statistics/. My favorites are learning the Tango (I plan to do that after I finish writing this), becoming more creative (I’ll write a whole blog entry about that next time it’s my turn), and of course accessing our library site to discover all the information treasures available to you: www.iue.edu/library

Feel free to stop online weekly to read an eclectic array of eruditions by your friendly campus library staff!

One thing I have learned as a librarian, is that most other librarians share great ideas and resources. I have not been disappointed this year. At a recent gathering of Indiana University librarians, Kirsten Leonard, from the Indiana University Kokomo campus, shared information about a tool she found during a presentation at a library-related conference. The organization responsible for the development of the library toolbar is LibX.org and provides open-access software and development support for librarians and libraries everywhere!

The toolbar is developed by individual libraries and offers a variety of options for searching. The Campus Library Toolbar includes access links to several important resources and web pages, it allows searching of several library resources from the browser’s toolbar and provides options for the search field to be processed.  The Campus Library Toolbar searches Red Hot Search/Quest, IUCAT, WorldCat.org, Google Scholar and Credo Reference.

The developers of this wonderful product provide an instant-access path for library users to some of the most used resources in libraries.  The toolbar finds library resources from typed search terms without individuals needing to remember resource or page addresses/URLS.  The toolbar also looks at several web-based book sellers and places the Red Hot Quest image on the resource.  In this way IUCAT will be searched for that specific book using the ISBN (International Standard Book Number); the tool uses only the Campus Library, Indiana University East’s records to accomplish this search. Once installed the image will show on various websites including Google Scholar, a text only product.

This product provides proxied access to the Campus Library resources from off-campus for all Indiana University East members with an IU username and passphrase.  The toolbar is in general use in the Campus Library in the Blakey Research Room, on the Mozilla/Firefox browser.  Please, visit us to try out this useful and fun toolbar!  Once installed the Mozilla/Firefox product will download updates for you, so you may use the most recent version with ease!

The permanent URL for the Mozilla/Firefox extension is http://libx.org/editions/71/B8/71B82B5A/libx-71B82B5A.xpi
and for the Beta IE plugin is
http://libx.org/editions/71/B8/71B82B5A/libx-71B82B5A.exe.

If you have questions regarding the Campus Library Toolbar, contact Sue at smcfadde@indiana.edu.

Posted originally in Red, Hot and New on blogspot.com.

Campus Library–The fall semester begins, Monday August 25, 2008 at Indiana University East. New and exciting tools are available at the Campus Library to help students and faculty research and review literature. The new search tool developed from Serial Solutions federated 360 SEARCH product and locally the instance is named, Red Hot Search. A related product 360 LINK is named Red Hot Quest. These two tools work together to find information resources to provide for research, review and scholarly work for students and faculty.

At a small academic library, locating full-text is limited by ownership, funds and resource access. These two important tools provide access to citations and through the quest to subscribed and un-owned resources in the form of full-text, document-delivery services/ILL through ILLiad, bibliographic management through a product called RefWorks, and information about other library services.

The dragon image will help students and faculty locate and follow services for the Campus Library. This stylized dragon image may be used in a variety of library resources to help individuals find information resources. Contact the library staff at 765-973-8411 for more information regarding workshops and reference appointments to help with your information needs. For academic success, Follow the Dragon….

Posted originally in Red, Hot and New on blogspot.

Wow, it is RED-HOT in the Campus Library! Our searches are on fire!

Searches on library databases have been relegated to one-at-a-time searching for most of the databases subscribed to by the Campus Library. Google is seen as faster and more encompassing. Welcome RED-HOT-SEARCH! A multi-database, full-featured search tool.

Since January 2008 the library staff have been adopting several services from Serials Solutions, a library vendor of online products. These products, or online tools, allow library databases to be organized and searched in groups. The library dragon image leads users to the new library tools offered by the library vendor Serials Solutions 360.

Currently, about 80 campus databases may be searched at one time, selected as subject search databases or clicked individually to search 1-80 databases at one time. This research tool is very flexible, offering clustered results options, help screens, and Full-text choices.

RED-HOT-QUEST is a partner tool that also uses the dragon image to identify options to locate and obtain access to the full-text item chosen by the user.

Campus Library Patrons can use these two tools to search for resources and then go on a QUEST to find the full-text of articles chosen from the search. The tool either leads the researcher directly to full-text the library subscribes to, links to options for document delivery services offered by the library or offers the user options to save the citation information to the bibliography tool, RefWorks.

Posted originally in Red, Hot and New on blogspot.com.