Tag Archives: databases

April 09 Workshop: Oh The Cites You’ll See!

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A researcher will often want to try to find articles in their field of study which are particularly useful to other scholars. But how can you find out which papers are more widely used? Join Michael Manasco and Ron Schwertfeger on April 9th to find out more! Oh The Cites You'll See
Together, Ron and Michael will talk about Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and Scopus (two of the resources available through the UAH Library to help you with your research needs). This session will take place in Room 214 of the UAH Salmon Library, at 12 noon on April 9th.

This session is open to everyone! UAH faculty, staff and students are encouraged to bring their own laptops or tablets, as there will be some practice exercises.

Click here if you need directions to the library from off-campus.

Refined Researchers at a Glance

OneSearch at UAH is now set to search full-text by default: what this means for you.

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Today, we made a change to the back-end of OneSearch so that it now when you search, it limits results to full-text by default.

OneSearch: Dozens of databases, thousands of sources, millions of articles. One Click.

Why did we do it? Many of our patrons using OneSearch are wanting something tangible and to dive into the information right away. While some are wanting a wider look at the field, most are wanting to see primarily what is in our collection. If the majority of our users are always clicking to turn the full-text limit on, then it makes sense to work with how our users search.

What does this mean? That the results you get will automatically be filtered to include only those for which you have immediate access. Rather than a mixed page of abstracts and full-text, you will have only those in full-text right away.

How will this impact your searching? If you are the kind of person who just wants to get a few articles that are immediately available – in PDF or HTML – then it speeds up your process by cutting out those articles for which we only have abstracts. If you are a little more of a power-searcher, and want to see all of what is available, or if you are searching for a topic where the articles are a little more obscure, you may need to turn off the “Limit to full-text” option to get a wider view.

OneSearch screen with the new options highlighted on the left side: Full Text and Library Collection

How do I turn these options off? See the graphic above. Click on the little blue/white Xs after “Full Text” and “Available in Library Collection”. This will remove those options and show you also articles without immediate full-text.

Will this affect other databases? For right now, the plan is to keep the other databases in their current configuration. Those going to databases like CINAHL or Business Source Premier are driving down to slightly more precise information, so the idea is that those users are more likely to want to powersearch. With that being said, keep in mind that databases like JSTOR and SpringerLink are already set to default to showing our collection.

Is this change permanent? We’ll keep an eye on usage and make sure people are getting what they want. If it turns out that this is not how people want to search, then of course we will change it back.

Whom should I contact if I get articles that show up in full-text searches but there is no full-text attached? You can call us at the reference desk at (256)824-6529, or email us at erefq@uah.edu. Or see http://libanswers.uah.edu for more options.

Scopus working on increasing author visibility and organization

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From a recent Scopus blog entry: The new Scopus author profile page has arrived.

Newly revamped, old distractions on the Author Profile page are gone and the best tools remain. For example, if an ORCID ID is associated with a Scopus profile then a link to that ORCID will display on the author detail page. Additionally, a new graph added to the sidebar gives a quick overview of an author’s recent productivity. Best of all, users can sort “Document” and “Cited-by” lists without having to leave the author profile or reload the page.

What this means for you varies on whether or not you have articles indexed by Scopus.

If you do, then your author profile page is a little bit cleaner and has more functions. It provides a convenient glance at most cited articles, co-authors, sources, and the sort. If something is incorrect, look for the link over on the upper right-hand side that says “Request author detail corrections”. Care to see your author page? Then head over to Scopus, click on the Author Search tab, and then search for yourself. Confirm the affiliation and view the page.

Whether or not you have articles indexed by Scopus, you can still make use of this to see what other researchers are doing. Have a big paper for a professor and want to make sure the quantum physicist you are citing is well respected? Well, here is a good way to see the citations and the interactions with the community. You can also subscribe to an author to see when he or she publishes new articles or get alerts, check a few different cross-tab style statistics, and similar sundry.

You can view this screenshot of Dr. Joseph Ng’s page to get a feel.

Sample of a Scopus Author Page

Scopus, click to access (note requires UAH login)

Scopus to start expanding indexing back to 1970

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An eye on global research: 50 million records, 21,000 titles, 5,000 publishers

“The interconnectedness of all things,” is the mantra of not-quite-detective (debate remains on whether he is quite holistic) Dirk Gently, and rarely does it reach more of a truth than in research fields, where the understanding the state of the art is as much an understanding-the-context as an understanding-the-content.

Here at the Salmon Library, one of our key resources for seeing how articles and research are interconnected is Scopus: an Elsevier product that helps to see which articles are citing which other articles, how they are being cited, how they are being used in other ways (online mentions, social media mentions), how they relate to the author’s body of work, how the journals in which they are published match up with the field as a whole, and so forth.

Whether you are a professor looking to get published or a student wondering which articles you should prioritize with your capstone project, Scopus can help, and it is about to get bigger.

The Scopus blog has just announced today that the team will begin the Scopus Cited References Expansion project. Among other things, this will track citation data back to 1970, giving a better overall picture of how articles and researchers use other articles and research. For any field of research that needs to go back more than the past couple of decades, this will be invaluable.

To quote from their blog:

The Cited References Expansion project aims to increase the depth of Scopus’ scholarly content while enhancing the ability to use Scopus for evaluation and trend analysis. Moreover, author profiles and h-index counts of researchers who published articles prior to 1996 will be more complete.

The increased indexing will “become apparent” in the fourth quarter of 2014, and should be completed in 2016.

Curious about Scopus and how you can use it? Contact the Reference Desk (phone: 256.825.6528 or email: erefq@uah.edu, see link for more options) and we can help!

UAHuntsville’s Propulsion Research Center gains national acclaim, again – Popular Science

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The Propulsion Research Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville has again gained national acclaim by being named the third “Most Awesome Lab in 2011” by Popular Science magazine as part of its “Best Places to Pursue Science” feature.  The latest issue of Popular Science is available full-text from the EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier database, courtesy of the UAHuntsville Salmon Library.  Please click here to read the full article .  Be sure to download the PDF version to see the article as it appears (with pictures and graphics) in the magazine. 

It was the second straight year UAHuntsville had received this honor from the national science magazine. The thrust of the university receiving this commendation revolves around UAHuntsville’s University Student Launch Initiative.  You can learn more about the Student Launch Initiative here.

Early Journal Content on JSTOR, Free to Anyone in World

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On September 6, 2011, JSTOR announced that they are making journal content published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.  This “Early Journal Content” includes discourse and scholarship in the arts and humanities, economics and politics, and in mathematics and other sciences.  It includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals. This represents 6% of the content on JSTOR.  For more info, read the full announcement from JSTOR here.

SpringerImages Trial until Oct. 31

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Please take advantage of a new trial of SpringerImages, a comprehensive collection of scientific and medical photos, graphs, histograms, tables and more, available now until Oct. 31, 2011.  You can access the SpringerImages trial from this Website:  http://www.springer.com/mytrial

SpringerImages is:
–An expansive and rapidly growing collection of scientific and medical images (over 3 million right now and over 500,000 added every year)
–Based on high quality trusted sources, such as SpringerLink or images.MD
–Always up-to-date as images are loaded as they are published
–Provides captions and extracts from the source plus the ability to link to the full-text
–Offers creation of image sets and a one-click export to PowerPoint or PDF

Learn more from the brochure here.  Please send any feedback or comments about this trial to us at http://libanswers.uah.edu.

New at the Library in 2011

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It’s going to be an exciting academic year of change at the UAHuntsville Library in the 2011 – 2012 academic year.  We have a number of new features and resources this year, some which are already here and some that are coming soon.

New furniture, workspaces, and improved study rooms are coming to the library in October.

We hope to have this all installed in the building during Fall Break, and are planning an Open House the week of Homecoming at UAHuntsville.  More information will be coming, but we plan on having a free concert in the building or just outside with local Indie Folk / Acoustic band Ashlyn Maine.

Read more about our new furniture at our earlier blog post, and become a fan of Ashlyn Maine on their Facebook page.

Scopus Database Now Available

Please go to http://www.scopus.com/home.url in order to access the Scopus database now available from the UAHuntsville Salmon Library. Access has been set up via IP Authentication (on-campus only).

Scopus, launched in November 2004, is the largest abstract and citation database containing both peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources. You can find a wealth of easily accessible information about getting the most from your Scopus access, including demos, tutorials and downloadable user guides at http://info.scopus.com

New Vending Machines on our First Floor

Students have long asked for them, and we’re happy to finally have three new vending machines available on our first floor!  There is a can machine, bottle machine, and also a snack machine available behind the copy machines on the first floor.  Drinks range in price from sixty cents to $1.25, and snacks are available for up to a dollar.

New eBook collections from Springer

A big thank you to the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries (NAAL) for our new access to selected 2011 eBooks from Springer. Ebooks are available in the following collections:

Access Journals from SpringerLink

You have access to approximately 1700 American journal titles from 1997 to present on SpringerLink! The world’s most comprehensive online collection of scientific, technological and medical journals, books and reference works.

Get Searching or Click here for SpringerLink’s featured journal titles by collection

Improved Mobile Access

We’ve improved the mobile version of our website optimized for iPhones so that you can now enjoy more efficient access resources such as LibGuides, Academic Search Premiere, and much more.  You can now also search our catalog directly from your device as well!

If you are using an iPhone or iPod Touch, you will be automatically redirected to the mobile version of our site.  We also hope to have a version compatible with Android devices soon.

We hope you are all settling in well for the new academic year at UAHuntsville!  Remember, you can Ask Us Anything at the Library.  Be sure to Like us on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter for more information.  You can also get in touch with us through either of those resources.  Even if the answer to your question isn’t in the library, we can point you to the best resource on campus to help.

 

 

Remote Access to library databases now encrypted

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Please be aware that if you access our databases remotely you will now be directed to a secure https login page.  All of our database links have been updated.  If you have added any database links to your bookmarks or favorites, you should automatically be directed to the https login page and the transition should be seamless.  Please let us know if you encounter a dead link so we can correct it.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.  You can reach us at 256-824-6529 or http://libanswers.uah.edu/.

Credo Reference database trial until Sept. 30

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For trial access to Credo Reference, please go to www.credoreference.com. Username and password information is available at the UAHuntsville Salmon Library Reference Desk. Stop by, call us at 256-824-6529, or send us a message at http://libanswers.uah.edu.

If you are not familiar with Credo Reference, they are the world’s largest online reference service featuring:
–555 full-text reference titles (and growing) with over 3 million entries from over 80 highly-respected publishers integrated in a robust search engine.
–Many new unique interactive features such as dynamic table functionality for world state, and county statistics, an interactive world atlas, flash animations, videos, poetry/literature readings, over 700 music files, and a critically-acclaimed concept map.
–More than 200,000 images from all subject areas, over 200,000 audio pronunciations, and a citation formatter in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats for all articles.
–New Topic Pages – Bringing library resources together (Books, eBooks, Journals, Periodicals, News, and Media) on thousands of topics.

To see a full list of titles currently available, please click on the following link: http://corp.credoreference.com/titles
Some recently added titles include:
Collins Greek-English Dictionary,
Collins English-Greek Dictionary,
Eastern Europe: An Introduction to the People, Lands, and Culture,ABC-CLIO
Globalization: Encyclopedia of Trade, Labor, and Politics, ABC-CLIO
The Hutchinson Chronology of World History, Helicon

To see a short video tour of Credo Reference, click the following link http://corp.credoreference.com/VideoTour

Please send your feedback to http://libanswers.uah.edu!