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WorldCat for Beginners: How to Search the Global Library

If I had to make a list of the five most important library research tools for historians, I would put WorldCat at the top of the list without a moment’s hesitation. While in the past, scholars were limited to local libraries, print bibliographies and the occasional visit to other libraries, today WorldCat provides them a gateway to the global print collection. WorldCat thus levels the playing field between the top-tiers research libraries and smaller libraries, such as Falvey Memorial Library. Our history students can discover and request basically all the published books on any given topic with the help of WorldCat. If they would only knew about WorldCat!

Remember the student who told you that there is nothing published about her topic? Did she know about and search WorldCat? Remember the student who told you that the library does not have any books about his topic? Did he know about interlibrary loan and how to request books from other libraries via WorldCat? The majority of history students are unfortunately not familiar with WorldCat, and the few who do know about it are often intimidated by some of its unnecessarily complicated search features.

Falvey’s 2012 Research Center Intern, Matt Ainslie, has put together a Brief Introduction to WorldCat, a short online video tutorial that will introduce your students to WorldCat. His Brief Introduction to the Chicago Manual of Style has been widely popular with our students. At last glance, it was viewed more than 1,200 times. Given the unexpected popularity of the Chicago Style tutorial, I would like to hear your ideas and suggestions for additional tutorials.


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Cambridge Histories Online now in Shades of Deep Purple

Cambridge University Press re-designed the interfaces of two popular reference collections: Cambridge Histories Online and Cambridge Companions Online. The old interface had various usability issues, which left the user at times frustrated. The new interface is less cluttered, more user-friendly and its attractive design and color scheme are pleasing to the eye.

Did you know that Cambridge University Press continues to add new and old print titles to the Cambridge Histories Online collection? In 2012, six back-list titles and seventeen new titles were added. Noteworthy among the new titles is The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations: Dimensions of the Early American Empire, 1754–1865 by William Earl Weeks, not to be confused with the 1993 volume authored by Bradford Perkins. The remaining three volumes in the series are slated for publication later this year. Forthcoming in 2013 is the second volume of the Cambridge History of Science series entitled Medieval Science. New 2012 titles include:

The interface for Cambridge Companions Online mirrors the Cambridge Histories Online interface except for the crimson color scheme. The Companions focuses on philosophy, religion, culture, literature, classics and music.

When did you last browse either one of these remarkable collections? It may be time to take a fresh look.


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JSTOR Books are now Available to Villanova Faculty and Students

JSTOR joined the ever-growing circle of e-book publishers late in 2012 starting with a collection of around 15,000 e-books from a range of well-respected university presses such as those of Penn, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, California, North Carolina and Columbia. Among them is a small number of non U.S. publishers, such as Boydell and Brewer, Edinburgh University Press and the University of Toronto Press. The complete list of available JSTOR book titles is available for review.

The Library is currently testing the e-book-publishing waters with a boutique collection of history titles. Army at Home by Judith A. Giesberg, PhD, is a familiar title here at Villanova University. While a few of the JSTOR books are duplicated in the library’s print collection, most of the JSTOR titles are new. JSTOR books owned by Villanova can be found in the library’s catalog as well as in the JSTOR database.

JSTOR books are seamlessly integrated with other JSTOR content. Just as journal content is fully searchable, so are the e-books. Search results can be filtered into results from journal articles and books simply by clicking on the newly added Book tab on the results screen. To include titles not owned by the Library in the results list, switch from “Content I can access” to “All content.” Books not available to Villanova faculty and students are identified by an X-icon next to the check box.

Each book has its own landing page with such features as stable URLs, a link to JSTOR book reviews, abstracts, the table of contents and the first 100 words of each chapter. Unfortunately, not all books are equal, and the different access options can be confusing. Some books are only available as single-user titles. Chapters from a single-user book can only be viewed by one person at a time. Downloads are available, but require registration for a free JSTOR account, and the downloaded PDF files cannot be printed. Single-user books have a security key icon on the book landing page which reminds the reader of the access limits. Multi-user books are as easy to access as JSTOR journal articles.

Use the links below to explore the different access models to JSTOR books.

A detailed overview over the JSTOR book program is available online. Questions or comments? Contact me directly (jutta.seibert@villanova.edu) or post your comments online.


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*NEW* Encyclopedia of Ancient History

The long awaited Encyclopedia of Ancient History is now available after repeated publication delays. Unparalleled in scope with over 5,000 original, peer-reviewed articles, the Encyclopedia covers subjects ranging from the ancient Near East to Pharaonic Egypt, the Roman Republic, and Late Antiquity. Five general editors, twenty-three area editors, and a total of 1,827 scholars collaborated on this project. Villanova University’s own Christopher Haas, PhD, contributed articles on Axum and Hypatia. Although available in thirteen print volumes, the Encyclopedia was conceived and planned as a digital reference work. Its content will be continually updated, and new articles will be added over time. Readers are encouraged to contact the editorial board with corrections and suggestions for additional entries.

Searching and browsing the contents of the Encyclopedia seems unnecessarily complicated. A first-time user will be tempted to simply use the search box on the start page, which will retrieve keyword matches from all Wiley-Blackwell titles. Only upon closer inspection will the reader notice the “Search in this Book” link beneath the search box. The “Find Articles” options on the left menu are barely noticeable as well. Articles are organized in twenty-two topical categories to facilitate browsing. The scope of the Encyclopedia makes it easy to compare topics between various ancient civilizations. A good example is the seven different entries on calendars.

Articles vary in length but rarely exceed ten pages. PDF files of articles are available for downloading. Each article lists references and suggested readings. A good number of references are written in foreign languages, but available English language translations are included as well. A “How to Cite” link generates a basic citation for each article. Alternatively, citations can be exported to RefWorks or EndNote. Overall, this is an excellent new reference title and a good starting point for undergraduate and graduate students alike.

You may also be interested in the following new e-reference works from the Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World Series:
A Companion to Women in the Ancient World
A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
A Companion to Tacitus

Questions or comments? Contact me directly (jutta.seibert@villanova.edu) or post your comments online.


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Open Access Rules in France: Persée, érudit, and revues.org

Interlibrary loan is often the only way to get hold of foreign-language-journal articles here at Villanova, given the University’s focus on undergraduate education and the limited demand for academic journals in languages other than English. The library’s foreign language subscriptions are generally only available in print, further complicating access in a time when online access is the norm. The French academic publishing environment took its time to embrace online access, but the wait was well worth it. Today the archives of a large number of humanities and social sciences journals published in France and Quebec are freely available online. Three open access platforms preserve French scholarship: Persée, érudit and revues.org. All three platforms are partially integrated with each other to improve content discovery.

Named after Perseus, the legendary hero of Greek mythology, Persée is an open access archive of French academic journals initiated by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research in order to preserve and disseminate French scholarship. Over the years Persée has expanded to include social sciences journals, besides the original humanities journals, as well as French Canadian journals and dissertations archived on the érudit platform. Most of the journals archived in Persée have a moving access wall restricting access to current content to subscribing institutions. Persée currently archives more than 135 academic journals and over 400,000 articles, mostly in French. It indexes an additional 38 French Canadian journals which are archived on the érudit platform. Anybody with an internet connection can search the complete archive and browse individual journals.

Like Persée, revues.org is an open access journal platform. It is part of the OpenEdition portal run by the Centre pour l’édition électronique ouverte (Cléo) in Marseille. While the back issues of all 381 journals archived on this platform can be accessed freely by anyone, the access to current content of some journals is restricted to subscribers. In some cases free online access is limited to html format, and only subscribers are permitted to download articles as PDF files. The archives of some journals are divided between the Persée and revues.org platforms with the deep back files stored in Persée and the more recent years available on revues.org.

 

Both the Persée and the revues.org platforms include central search boxes which will search the content of all archived journals while also allowing the reader to search or browse individual journals. Aside from proper names, search terms should be entered in French since most of the publications are in French. Interested readers can bookmark their favorite journals or set up email alerts (via an RSS feeds) for new content. The journal articles archived in Persée and revues.org are at least partially indexed in various library databases, such as the International Medieval Bibliography, Historical Abstracts, and L’Année Philologique. The familiar blue Find It button will link directly to the open access journal titles archived in Persée. The library is still in the process of establishing a similar link to journals on the revues.org platform. All articles include citations with a date stamp, URL and sometimes a digital object identifier (DOI). Persée also has a citation export function which will download citation information to EndNote and RefWorks.
Most of the journals archived in Persée and revues.org are not part of the Library’s journal subscriptions, so that adding these platforms to the Library’s full-text-link service considerably expands access to foreign language journals. As for the limited number of French journals to which Falvey subscribes, among them Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, the Annales historiques de la Révolution française and the Revue philosophique de Louvain, adding these titles to the Library’s E-Journal Finder will increase overall accessibility.

I hope this description will encourage you to take a look at these open access journal platforms and to browse available journals in your subject area. What is your favorite open access scholarly resource? Email the name and URL directly to me (jutta.seibert@villanova.edu) or post it online, and I will feature it in a future blog post.


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New Online Tutorial on Chicago-Style Citations

Are you tired of repeating the basics of Chicago Style notes and bibliographies to your students?
Are your students confused about how to format first and subsequent notes following Chicago style?

Clear up some of your students’ confusion by referring them to Falvey’s Brief Introduction to the Chicago Manual of Style.  Research Center intern Matt Ainslie has created a brief online tutorial (4 min.) in which he demonstrates step-by-step how to cite a sample source in the first note, in subsequent notes and in the bibliography.

The tutorial includes a link to the Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide, which is basically a short list of templates for first notes, subsequent notes and the full bibliographic entries for commonly cited sources such as books, chapters, journal articles, dissertations and even web sites.  The Quick Guide is easy to use and a great reference tool for undergraduate and graduate students alike.  It includes a link to the full text online version of the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Please contact me with your ideas and suggestions for additional tutorials.


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Falvey Favorites, Tags, and Lists

Have you ever wondered what those cute little hearts in the library’s catalog could do for you?  Did you notice that some catalog records are tagged? Favorites and tags can be used in different ways to organize books into lists for personal use or to share them with students and colleagues.  Here is a short overview of the functionality of these catalog features.

Tags are public, which means that everybody can see them in the online catalog. The creator of a tag does not control its use in the catalog. Others may add the same tag to other records. Take a look at the his8204 tag. Anybody can add the his8204 tag to a similar or a totally unrelated title. Records with the same tag can be retrieved with a tag search, one of the search options in the catalog. Simply type h into the search box. The new search prediction feature of the online catalog will list all existing tags with an initial h, among them his8204. Tags are a social bookmarking feature and are generally used for classification purposes. Each tag represents a piece of metadata contributed by the community. I used the his8204 tag to create a list of selected ancient sources in translation. Tags are great for students collaborating on a project. Just remember that you have no editorial control over the use of a tag. This also means that the community can contribute to your list and expand it.

Use the Favorites feature if you would like to retain editorial control over your lists. You can still share your lists with students and colleagues. Just remember that only public lists can be shared. Simply copy the URL of a list and post it online or distribute it via email. Ready to create a list? Click on Add to Favorites in the record of your first title. You will be prompted to log into your catalog account. You can choose to add titles to a new or to an already existing list. Lists can be edited and records can be enriched with personal notes and tags. Here are some examples:
Academic Writing
American Political History
Contemporary Popular Music

It is easy to create new lists and add tags in the online catalog. Give it a try. To access existing lists in your personal catalog account, simply click on My Account in the top right hand corner of the library’s Web site and log into Catalog Favorites, Tags & Lists.

Feel free to contact us with any questions or comments that you may have.


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New Content in Grove Art Online

By Alice Bampton

Oxford University Press, the publisher of Grove Art Online, the foremost scholarly art encyclopedia, has made numerous updates as part of an on-going major commitment “to uphold [its] … relevance and scholarly integrity.” Among these changes are:
• updated bibliographies of more than 550 Italian Renaissance entries,
• the addition of new and revised essays and biographies about late 20th and early 21st century artists who include certain aspects of science in their art, included in the science and contemporary art, bio art, and science and art entries, (See, for example, Joseph Beuys, Critical Art Ensemble, or Stelarc.)
• access to new articles in the forthcoming Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art, such as Arthurian legends in medieval art, Bohun manuscripts, and female monasticism,
• access to new articles in the forthcoming Grove Encyclopedia of American Art. Highlights from this work include Laylah Ali, Broadacre City, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and more.
Grove Art Online contains the full text of the 34-volume Grove Dictionary of Art (1996), with over 45,000 articles written by internationally famous scholars plus links to over 130,000 images. Coverage includes all types of visual arts from prehistory to contemporary from all parts of the world making it a core reference for art history. You can search topics by culture, civilization, period, style, artist and more; the database is extremely user friendly.


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ARTstor workshop – Friday, December 10

Would you like to use ARTstor, but aren’t sure how to proceed? Are you already a user but want to brush up on your skills? Come to the ARTstor workshop in Falvey on Friday, December 10, at 2:30 pm. ARTstor offers various training modules and we would like to offer the two most popular ones chosen by potential users.

Please look at the following training modules and let us know which interest you on the sign up sheet.


Click here to sign up
for the workshop.


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The Online Edition of the Library’s New Books Shelf

Did you know that the library’s catalog includes a New Items search feature, that makes it easy and convenient to browse the new books and films acquired for your department?  You can use it to browse the new titles ordered in your field.  Many of the titles ordered in the last thirty days are unavailable and have titles in all capital letters.  These items are currently on order and have not yet arrived on the book shelf.  Please note that these order records are short records and do not include call numbers or subject headings.  Available catalog facets will only work for complete records with the exception of the format facet.

Click here to browse new history titles ordered in the last thirty days
Click here to browse new art history titles ordered in the last thirty days

Visit the New Items link on a regular basis and keep up to date with new purchases in your subject area.  Feel free to contact me with any feedback and comments that you may have.


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Last Modified: November 1, 2010

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