Business Source Premier Interface

In case you haven't heard already, the enhanced interface for Business Search Premier is now available. I played with it a bit and it's definitely an improvement for business research over the "regular' Ebsco interface.

The Plagiarism Blog

Been catching up on some blog reading today and noticed a post on The Information Literacy Land of Confusion about a new blog by Susan Herzog of Eastern Connecticut State University called The Plagiarism Blog. Looks like a very useful tool for keeping up with plagiarism issues and trends. I added it to the list o' library related blogs in the side menu.

Testing Computer Literacy

There was a story on NPR's Morning Edition today about the ETS computer literacy test. I'll post a link to the full-text transcript once it's available, but in the meantime you can listen here.

Committee Meeting - May 10

The next Reference Committee meeting will be held on Tuesday, May 10th from 10am - 12 noon in the JCLRC Library Instruction room on the Clarkston campus. I'll post the agenda to the committee website as soon as it is available.

Have a good weekend!

Distance Learning Article

There's an article in the new Journal of Academic Librarianship by Zheng Ye (Lan) Yang called "Distance Education Librarians in the U.S. ARL Libraries and Library Services Provided to the Distance Learners". Whew. Talks about numbers of specifically DL librarians at ARL libraries and some information about what services they provide. Of particular interest to the DL Committee folks.

No FT online that I could find but we have it here at Decatur if anyone would like a copy.

And here's an unrelated video of a kid juggling while playing Dance, Dance Revolution, which is what I feel like I've been doing today. The mirror site works best.

EasyBib

Anyone familiar with this site: http://easybib.com/? It generates MLA citations for you, for free, and APA citations if you pay $6 a month. The service claims to "[adhere] to the 6th Edition of MLA Handbook for Writers and Researchers, and the 5th edition of the APA Publication Manual."

You select the format of the item you need to cite, enter details about the item into labeled fields, click a button, and the citation is generated. You can even save a list of citations and return to it later, or export the list to print. If you choose to print, EasyBib generates a Works Cited list (with the heading) and displays it in MS Word within your browser window.

Thoughts? Comments?

Free Gale database access

It's a bit late for this as the offer only runs through Saturday, but Gale is providing free access to 30 databases to celebrate National Library Week.

Go here, http://trials.galegroup.com/nlw2005/, to see the list of databases and to set up an account (yes, you have to register).

IM Reference Article

Hmmm, thought I posted this yesterday but it seems to have vanished. Blogger fun.

There's an article in the current Library Journal by Aaron Schmidt and Michael Stephens called "IM Me" that gives a good overview of using instant messengers like Yahoo or MSN to provide chat reference services. We're looking into doing this for the Distance Learning students in the DL Committee. Any thoughts on doing a trial of it over the Summer for all users? It would be completely voluntary. If it doesn't work out, then we can go back to just providing for DL students through the DL committee. We can discuss at the next meeting if there is interest.

Along the same lines, I went to a program at ACRL called Collaboration or Chaos? How To Develop, Staff and Promote A Successful Collaborative Virtual Reference Project*. The presenters dealt more with commercial services like 24/7 instead of IM but it was still very interesting from the collaboration persperctive. If we do some sort of virtual reference, it would be an internally collaborative project.

*PowerPoint presentation.

Saturday ACRL Wrap Up

Hello again from the Twin Cities. Very interesting sessions today. One this am was a panel discussion on "googilizing" that covered all kinds of disruptive technologies like metasearch, visualization searching, customization etc. Kind of a live version of the "googilizers vs resisters" article from LJ a bit back. They showed this cool tongue in cheek video on the ultimate expression of googilization in the not too distant future. Worth a watch.

Next up was a session on the Univ of Rochester Info Lit stuff. They talked more about a survey they did of faculty to figure out what they want and expect from students and what they did to tailor services to the results. Stanley Wilder of article fame did talk a little about info lit but mainly about who the students are and how they approach assignments/ library services. He made a good point that students definite their identity in terms of specific courses and assignments, not in general "information literacy" terms. They see user education as a means to a specific end and not as a seperate discipline or course of study. Interesting stuff about web design too, which was kinda unexpected.

Just got out of a session on open access that gave a good overview of the OA movement and different kinds of repositories. Got a little "future-y" at the end but still a good session. Found out about the Directory of Open Access Journals which I hadn't heard about.

Most of the stuff should be online somewhere or another so I'll post links to things when I get back.

See y'all next week.

chicken

chicken
Originally uploaded by decatur library.

Arizona State uses this inflatable chicken to promote their virtual reference services! But does it rap??

More ACRL

acrl lobby
Originally uploaded by decatur library.

Hello again from Minneapolis. The conference is going quite well. Went to a very interesting session on virtual reference this am. And got some info on designing logos for DL stuff in a poster session. Both of these should come in handy. More info when I get back. Going to sessions this pm on libraries/ info technology collaboration and on marketing to millennials. Should be interesting! The cover story on ACRL in the MPLS paper this am was about a preconference on millennials. So it's definitely a hot topic.More later.

Greetings From Minneapolis!

river
Originally uploaded by decatur library.

Greetings. Eva, Sherry and I are in Minneapolis for the ACRL Conference. The weather is gorgeous! Everything got started with the opening session today and an interesting talk by William J. Mitchell on the influence of technology on the uses of public spaces, including libraries. Very interesting!

Everything really gets going tomorrow with lots of great sessions. I'll try to post a couple of updates and we'll have lots of stuff for you when we get back.


Here we are with a statue of Mary Tyler Moore:



And here's the statue in the daytime:

One more article about the millenial student

Can you stand one more item about net generation students?

Gary Roberts has a new column in Computers in Libraries called "Computers in Small Libraries." In his debut column, "Small Libraries, Big Technology," he writes:

Our college student patrons make less of a distinction between the physical and the virtual world. These students are not "going online." Rather, they are online all the time, constantly connected to their cell phones, PDAs, e-mail accounts, and chat groups. For these patrons, 24/7 communication is now a reality.

The full-text is available from Research Library. (Most of the article is about web design.)