Nursing Resources

Posted on November 4, 2013 Written by

This week, we’re spotlighting the medical resource, OvidSP—a full-text database containing over 67 journals in the field of Nursing, Public Health, Pharmacology, Patient Education, Clinical Medicine, and more.

You can find OvidSP though our Library homepage, under Research–>Tech Databases.  Scroll down to find it in our alphabetical list of database titles.

Main search box of OvidSP

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What makes OvidSP different from of the other databases is its ability to retrieve multimedia files, including video, charts, and photographs, to help give life, movement, and color your research results.  Imagine preparing presentation for your topic, and having access to charts and images to include in your slides?  Just search a topic and check the box for “Include Multimedia.”  If the full-text articles include pictures, OvidSP gives you the option of exporting all images into a PowerPoint file.

OvidSP is also able to manage your citations by allowing you to export in your preferred style—such as Chicago, APA, MLA, and many others—into your email, a word document, or other citation management systems.  Send articles to yourself via email or create a personal login to save your searches and search results.

You can also limit search results by publication year, article type, journal subjects, and relevancy (also known as “star ranking).  Avoid the information overload and try limiting to results published just in the last year or just within one or more sets of journals.

Having trouble with too little information?  Change the resource selection in Ovid SP to include the Abstracts and Table of Contents for Ovid Journals as well as the Arkansas Tech Full Text resource.

Displays 2 resource types

This will broaden your search to include the abstracts and table of contents of hundreds of other journals.  However, you may have to use Inter-Library Loan or search for journal titles in our A-to-Z electronic journal list to retrieve full text of the articles.

For more information about OvidSP, view this quick tutorial available on Youtube:

You can also contact one of your friendly neighborhood librarians at the Reference Desk or through email at askalibrarian@atu.edu if you have any more questions about this database, other databases, or research of any kind.

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The Shutdown Breakdown

Posted on October 2, 2013 Written by

If you are currently conducting research using government-provided statistics, reports, articles, images, or other information, you might hit some roadblocks due to the U.S. Government shutdown.  Effective Oct. 1, many of the government websites and databases we take for granted are now unavailable or available in a more limited way.  This could impact your research, as well as the research of faculty and students across the country.  Here’s a short list of some government-based databases and websites affected by the shutdown.

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Government websites unavailable:

  • ERIC — The Library has four different interfaces for this important educational database supported through the federal government.  The interfaces through OCLC, EbscoHOST, and Proquest will provide article searching to find citations.  However, full text is unavailable from the actual ERIC.gov site, and the direct interface at the ERIC website is completely offline at the time of this post.  We have selected older ERIC documents available on microfiche, and some will be available in other publications at Tech Library by selecting the “Linksource” icon in the citation.  The friendly librarians at the Reference Desk will also be able to assist you in finding these resources from other sources, and Interlibrary Loan can also help provide you with documents during the shutdown.
  • Census.gov — Census websites are now closed, and all services associated with them.  This includes American Fact Finder, Federal Statistics, and other government statistical websites.
  • Bureau of Economic Analysis
  • Business.gov
  • CDC Wonder — a comprehensive on-line public health information system of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Data.gov
  • Disability.gov
  • FCC (Federal Communications Commission)
  • FTC (Federal Trade Commission)
  • NASA
  • National Center for Education Statistics
  • National Parks Service
  • USDA (United States Department of Agriculture)
  • United States Copyright Office

Government websites with limited functionality or limited updates

Government websites with full functionality:

  • THOMAS — This government website contains a fully searchable database of congressional bills and legislation.  The site continues to be updated as events in Congress unfold.
  • Statistical Abstracts of the United States (via Proquest)–A comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.
  • HealthCare.gov–This site features information for the new national health insurance program provided by Affordable Healthcare Act.  The first day to sign up for the service was October 1st, and while there have been reports of glitches and crashes, the site appears to be functioning…for the moment.
  • All websites and information necessary to protect lives and property.
  • Most of the direct-links to government documents as found in our online catalog.

Some Arkansas-related websites and places affected by the shutdown include all of the national parks within the state, the Clinton presidential library, and other nationally funded museums and historic sites.

For more information about the government shutdown, visit the USA.gov site which describes in more detail the  ramifications of the government shutdown on national services and agencies.

As the list grows or shrinks, we’ll keep updating this post as we are informed.  If you have problems locating information, contact the librarians here at Ross Pendergraft Library at askalibrarian@atu.edu, and we’ll help you find the work-arounds to the shutdown.

noaa

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Changes

Posted on August 30, 2013 Written by

For many of you, this week is all about change–a change in lifestyle, a change of address, and a change in sleeping patterns.  The Library has made some changes, too.  Here’s a summary of some of the new things we’ve added, along with some of changes we’ve made to our existing collections over the summer break:

New Databases

We added two new databases to our collection that is sure to appeal to anyone interested in current events, international studies, foreign languages, or just about anyone trying to brush up on their Spanish.  Mango Languages is our new language-learning system which can help you learn over 60 different languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, or even Pirate.   Library Press Display is a digital newspaper database featuring newspapers from around Arkansas, the United States, or from 97 other countries around the world.   Learn more about both services from our summer blog posts from July 12 and July 17.

New Research Guides

The Librarians have been hard at work this summer creating new study guides for various subjects and courses to get you prepared for researching using Library resources.  This summer, we added research guides for Art, Biology, Distance Learning, E-Tech 101, and many more.  You can view them all by directing your browser guns here: http://libguides.atu.edu/.  They can also be found under the Help menu from our homepage.

New Mobile Site

Get help from Library whenever and wherever you are with our new mobile site: http://library.atu.edu/m/.  Get quick access to our databases, online catalog, and our contact information from any mobile device.

Audiobooks Moved To the 1st Floor

We’ve moved the Audiobooks to the east of the Reference Desk, in the first section of shelving.  Last year, they were in the Music Lab, which made it difficult to browse for your favorite titles.  Now they are on the shelves near the Reference desk, available for check-out and browsing any time the library is open.

Youth Moved To the 1st Floor, Too

The Youth collection, comprising books for children and young adults, has moved to the first floor as well, directly across from the Periodicals section in the “short” shelves.

Reference and Index were shifted

Looking for a familiar book in a familiar place in Reference?  Can’t find it? Never fear–we have shifted the Reference and Index collections so not everything is in their usual place anymore.  If you still can’t find it, it is possible the item is missing or was removed from the collection.  If so, tell us about it: askalibrarian@atu.edu.   We might be able to acquire another copy for the library.

So how do you like the changes?  Let us know by commenting below, on Facebook, or send us an email.  It’s your library–what would you change?

 

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This Just In…

Posted on July 17, 2013 Written by

Sources at Tech Library now confirm a story, originally leaked on Facebook, that Arkansas Tech students have access to a new digital newspaper service called Library PressDisplay.

Reported to contain access to over 2,200 newspapers from 97 countries, in 54 languages, Library PressDisplay hopes to fulfill the need for students, faculty, and staff to stay informed about current events from around the world and around the country.

“We’re positively ecstatic about the color photographs, full-text searching ability, and the depth of coverage from around the world,” quoted one librarian.  “I can now read the front page of today’s newspaper from Egypt!  It’s in Arabic, however, so I can’t actually read it until I learn the language.”

But what does the new database offer for those interested in local news?

A spokesperson from the library reported that access to the digital version of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette is also available, as well as other newspapers across Arkansas like the Northwest Arkansas Times, Texarkana Gazette, The Sentinel-Record, and more.

“Unlike other newspaper databases, Library PressDisplay doesn’t serve up just the html version of the newspaper story—it’s the actual, digitized version of the paper.  It includes all of the photographs, ads, headlines, comics, and classifieds, exactly as they appear in the printed version,” observed one Tech librarian on the scene.

It was noted that, in addition to content, database users also have the ability to view picture galleries, RSS feed stories, listen to an audio recording of a newspaper, and share news stories via email or blog post.

Unfortunately, for those seeking newspaper articles from the past, it may not be a suitable resource.

As one librarian remarked, “If you’re looking for older news stories, Library PressDisplay covers only the last three months.  Try something like Lexis-Nexis Academic, or Newspaper Source for the last few decades of modern news.  You can also view the number of digital indexes for individual newspapers like the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Pennsylvania Gazette for coverage going back a hundred years or more.”  All of these sources can be found on the List of Databases, “News” topical heading.

An extensive investigation also revealed the presence of “real” newspapers located in the Newspaper section of the library, as well as several other newspapers on microfilm accessible through the online catalog.

When asked how students could find assistance using this new database, a librarian at the Reference Desk enthusiastically whispered, “Ask us!” and promptly listed an email address, Reference Desk phone number, and the library hours during which the staff can be reached.  A video tutorial was also discovered on the Library PressDisplay webpage:

 http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/ShowDemo.aspx?name=demo_homepage

 

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List of Databases?

Posted on July 9, 2013 Written by

Databases: they come in different shapes and sizes. Some provide full-text, and some have only abstracts.  Some are interdisciplinary and cover a little bit of everything; some are focused on one particular subject.

If you’ve ever used our main “Article” search box on the homepage, you have sampled one of our most interdisciplinary databases–Academic Search Complete.

Article search page

It covers a little bit of everything, includes peer-reviewed articles, and makes a great launching point for undergraduate research.  Maybe you’ve tried it, and found a few resources you could use.

But what if you need more?  What if you couldn’t find…anything?

Morpheus

If at first you don’t succeed, try another database.  We subscribe to over 150, in fact, and they can all be accessed from our homepage, under Research, in Tech Databases.

The list is organized in alphabetical order and includes a description of each database beside the name.  Under the Access column, you’ll find that most of the databases are Tech-only, meaning you must be a student, faculty, or staff to access the content.  If you live off-campus, you’ll be prompted to login using your Tech ID and password before using the database.  On-campus, however, you will have seamless access, though some databases can only be used on-campus.

How do you know what databases are right for you?  If your research is focused on a particular subject, like music or psychology, click the subject terms to the left of the list.  You will then see a much shorter list of databases you might want to use for a more subject-focused set of results.

Problems?  More questions?  Contact your friendly neighborhood librarian: askalibrarian@atu.edu 

You can also contact us via phone or in person, anytime the library is open.

Happy searching!

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Accessible Archives

Posted on April 2, 2013 Written by

From now until April 14th, the library is offering a trial of the historical newspaper database, Accessible Archives.  If you are looking for primary sources from the 18th and 19th centuries, look no further.  Browse individual newspaper titles such as The Pennsylvania Gazette or selected newspaper collections, like the African American newspaper collection.  Search across all of the titles for primary source articles that portray America’s biggest moments like the American Revolution and the Civil War from the actual eye-witnesses to history.  Results include the actual images of the source, as well as easily readable full-text.

http://library.atu.edu/research/DB/dbtrial.php

Try it today and send us your comments about the  resource to Carol Hanan: chanan@atu.edu.

women76

Weld, Hastings H. (1845, March). The Women of ’76. Godey’s Lady’s Book. Retrieved from http://www.accessible.com/accessible/ 

 

 

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Newspaper Database Trial

Posted on February 4, 2013 Written by

From now until Feb. 28th, the Arkansas Tech community is invited to help us test-drive a newspaper database called NewspaperDirect.  Featuring the digital editions of over 2,000 newspapers from around the world, this database allows you to search for news, sports, weather, and photographs published in the last 60 days.  Browse photographs, subscribe to RSS feeds, and share stories via email.  Search for specific topics within a specific range, or browse by country and date.   Read the online edition of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, including classifieds and editorials. Don’t have time to read?  Open the Interactive Radio icon and listen to the news via Windows Media Player.

During the trial period, the librarians at Arkansas Tech would like your feedback to help us shop for the best databases.  So try it out and tell us what you think.  Send your comments, suggestions, complaints, or compliments to Carol Hanan or just use the comment field below to tell us if you think this database is newsworthy.

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African American Experience

Posted on February 1, 2013 Written by

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In celebration of Black History month, we are proud to feature the online database, African American Experience.  This resource is a great starting place for information about African American history and culture.  Search within articles, speeches, cultural documents, quotes, as well as government and court documents.   Find video, audio, and images, such as this poster to the right, by filtering search results.  Additional features include the “Eras” link used to browse topics organized by a historical timeline.  The “Analyze” section presents perspectives and other curriculum pieces to help students form theses and generate discussion on controversial, challenging topics.  Citation tools are included so that every article, video, or primary source document can be easily cited in MLA, APA, or Chicago.  Look for this database from our homepage under Tech Databases.

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Sir Winston Churchill

Posted on January 24, 2013 Written by

Sir Winston Churchill passed away forty-eight years ago at the age of 90. He is known for his major role as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II. He started writing in 1899 and Literature Online lists 59 works by him. Learn about his life and work through the biography database Literature Online at http://goo.gl/qkXkQ. View videos of some of his speeches in Britannica Academic Edition at http://goo.gl/JcETz. See what the Tech Library holds on Sir Winston Churchill at http://goo.gl/cPdko.

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Edouard Manet

Posted on January 23, 2013 Written by

Edouard Manet was born in Paris on January 23, 1832. He was a French painter. He was a precursor of the famed impressionist period (late 19th to early 20th centuries). His art was openly rejected at first and it is only in the early 1870s that it was recognized as a new form. He and Monet became friends in 1874. Read about Manet’s life and work on Britannica Academic Edition at http://goo.gl/4bxmE. Learn about Edouard Manet through the books and DVDs the Tech Library holds (http://goo.gl/peLxv).

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