Fall Break Upgrade Postponed!!

The Technology Support Center just announced that the software upgrades intended for this weekend have been postponed.  This means that email, Angel, and my.scranton will be available over Fall Break.  Library online resources (databases, catalog, interlibrary loan, course reserves) will all be accessible as usual, though the building will still be closed over the weekend.

Here’s the official notice from the Support Center:

The hardware and software upgrades scheduled for October 9 – 12 have been postponed. These upgrades will be rescheduled at a later date. University enterprise computer systems will be available as normally scheduled. As always, information technology questions or problems can be directed to the Technology Support Center can be reached at x4357 or techsupport@scranton.edu

Also, the Library building will be closed from 4:30 pm on Friday 10/9, and will reopen at 8:30 am on Tuesday 10/13 for Fall break. The 24 hour Pro Deo room will be open this weekend. Have a great break!

Fall Break Library Resource Access

The University’s Information Resources department has announced an important outage of critical University services over Fall Break.

Due to a needed upgrade, both email (RoyalMail) and my.scranton.edu will not be available from 4:30pm on Friday, October 9 through 8:30 am on Tuesday, October 13.

Angel and Library services (including our catalog and research databases) will be available during the service outage but must be accessed using the URL www.scranton.edu/myScranton.  You can log in using your usual my.scranton username and login.

Other Library services such as Electronic Reserves (ERes), PALCI E-Z Borrow, Ask-a-Librarian, and Interlibrary Loan will be available during the service outage as well and can be accessed from the Library’s homepage.  Please note, however, that Interlibrary Loan requests are received by the Library via email – so to be sure that your ILL request is processed, it would be best to send it before 4:30pm on Friday or after 8:30am next Tuesday.  PALCI E-Z Borrow requests will not be affected by the unavailability of email.

Last but not least, don’t forget that the Library will be closed over Fall Break.  Our hours for the weekend will be:

Friday, October 9: 8:00am – 4:30pm

Saturday, October 10: CLOSED

Sunday, October 11: CLOSED

Monday, October 12: CLOSED

Tuesday, October 13: 8:00am – 11:30pm

Students, be sure to plan ahead if you are thinking of doing research or homework over fall break.  If you have any questions about the availability of Library services this weekend, contact  the Library’s Associate Director, Bonnie Strohl, at strohlb1 (at) scranton (dot) edu or 570-941-4006.  For information about the service outage in general, contact the Technology Support Center.

Update: Tech Support center just announced on Wednesday (10/7/09) that the planned software upgrades will be postponed.

Is it Peer Reviewed?

Articles in journals that are peer reviewed or refereed are reviewed by experts in the subject area in addition to being edited by the publishers.  Because this is the highest level of scholarship, many assignments require peer reviewed sources. Ulrichsweb, found on the Library’s A-Z List of Databases,  is a good way to identify peer reviewed journals.

You can search by keyword or title.

Searching for the keyword adolescence resulted in a list of titles.  The legend indicates peer reviewed or “refereed” titles with a column in front of the title.

Clicking on a title gives you more information about that journal.  There are also links to Serials Solution and to the library’s catalog.  In addition to finding out if a journal is peer reviewed, you can use Ulrichsweb as a database by searching for a keyword or subject and using the Serials Solution link to get the fulltext of articles in other databases.

Questions?  Ask-a-Librarian.

U of Scranton yearbooks online, from Aquinas to Windhover

January, named after the Roman god of gates and doorways, is not only a great month to celebrate the new year, but also to remember the past. The Weinberg Memorial Library has just made it even easier to reminisce by digitizing all of the University of Scranton’s yearbooks, from the 1916 Aquinas to the 2007 Windhover.

The Weinberg Memorial Library’s Digital Services department is proud to present the University of Scranton Digital Yearbook Collection, a 74 volume set of almost 20,000 digitized pages – all available to the public. You can browse the books to get a feel for each year’s unique student culture, or search the books to find photographs of your favorite University faculty, staff, and alumni!

Questions or comments? Contact the WML Digital Services department at (570) 941-7003.

Need Journal Articles from 1865?

Then JSTOR is a database you want to try.

If you are looking for journal articles from as far back as 1865, this database will provide them for you, and in .PDF full-text format too. Here’s how you would run a search for your topic, in order to find articles about that topic, which were written in bygone days:

• Select JSTOR on our A-Z List of Databases.
• The way to narrow your search to find journal articles from a specific time period is to place a check-mark in the box next to “Article” under “Limit To: Type:” and then to put the range of years you are looking for in the “Limit To: Date Range:” fields. So, for example, if I want journal articles on my topic from the years 1865-1940, I will check off “Articles” and then put “From: 1865″ and “To: 1940.”
• Then, type your search topic into the Advanced Search field at the top of the page. Keep in mind that your topic may have been called by a different name back in the 1800s!
• Then click “Search,” look for article titles that cover what you need, click into them to read the abstracts (summaries) as needed, and select the .PDF option for viewing, printing and saving the articles for your research.

Remember, if you’re working from home or your dorm, make sure you first sign into My.Scranton.edu, and then select “A-Z Database Listing” from inside the Library tab. This way, when you eventually get to JSTOR, the database will recognize you as a student, and it will let you access the full-text .PDF of the articles you need.

Ever wonder what was being written about, say, librarians, in the late 1800s-early 1900s? Go give the search a try to find out!* There is one very interesting article from 1929 about a study of ways that librarians cultivated “wholesome reading interests” back then (“Methods Employed to Stimulate Interests in Reading. I” by William F. Rasche, from The School Review, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Jan., 1929), pp. 29-36) — very interesting indeed.

*So, okay, I know most of you probably don’t care about librarians and our fascinating history as public figures in the community… Ahem. But! Whatever your research interest is (for instance, I know there’s an assignment going around about researching the same social issue in 3 different historical time periods) JSTOR is a great place to start in your search for old journal articles on the topic.

Project MUSE now on our Facebook page

Exciting news! The article database Project MUSE has now designed an application for Facebook. “The University of Scranton Weinberg Memorial Library” (found here) has just added the Project MUSE search box to our FB Page, which means you can search for articles right from inside Facebook. I just tested it out, and it definitely works, allowing you to open the full-text .PDF’s of articles in your results list.

There’s a possibility if you use the search box from home, you’ll be prompted for your My.Scranton username and password — but just type these in and you should have access to the full-text articles in this database.

This is a step in the direction of giving you guys full article searching and access capabilities from right inside Facebook, which is our ultimate goal.

So, give it a try! And if you hit a dead end, or for some reason you aren’t able to access the full-text of articles in your results list, definitely let us know (leave a Wall comment or post in the discussion forums on our FB page) so we can fix the problem.

Just for fun: try running a search for “Pittsburgh Steelers” (I know, such a scholarly topic :-P ) and yinz should check out the .PDF of the 2nd hit in the results list! (And I’m not even a Pittsburgh native — just an adoring Steelers fan who laments their loss to Philly tonight. *sigh*)

Use RefWorks to Create Bibliographies

RefWorks is an easy way to store citations and generate bibliographies in correct format, either MLA, APA, or any of numerous other format styles. Students and faculty can find RefWorks by going to the A-Z List of Databases and then clicking on the blue RefWorks button near the top of the page. The first time you access RefWorks you will be asked to create a log-in name and password.

Most databases will allow you to export citations directly to your RefWorks account. Once in the account these citations can be organized and stored in folders according to subject. From these folders you can generate bibliographies in correct format style. Using the Write-N-Cite component of RefWorks you can also insert correct parenthetical references into the texts of your papers as you write.

RefWorks is easy to use. There are helpful tutorials online. A useful “how-to” folder is available at the Reference Desk. And, finally, if you have problems or would like to schedule either a one-on-one training session or instruction in RefWorks for your whole class, please give the Reference Department a call at 570-941-4000.