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Syllabus Tip – Send Students to Library for Required Readings

If you will be requiring your students to read scholarly articles this semester, please consider sending them to the library to find the full text themselves (assuming the article is included in the library’s holdings). Rather than sending the students a PDF via email or Blackboard, or simply distributing a printout in class, allowing the students to search out the article on their own has several advantages.

Good for students

Allowing students to search the library’s resources to find the full text of an article from the citation builds familiarity with the library and its website. This exercise also demonstrates that the library is a valuable place to find scholarly resources. As an added bonus, your students will learn to interpret a citation. Finding the full text is good practice for scholarly research!

To help with this task, we provide detailed instructions for finding the full text using an article citation on our Finding Full Text Guide. Feel free to include this link on your syllabus. Librarians are also available to help by phone, email, chat, or in person.

Good for the Library

Sending students to the library’s website for full text articles being used in your class helps the library keep better statistics. We regularly evaluate our collection to ensure that it is meeting the needs of faculty and students. If you distribute a printout of an article to the students of your class, our records will only indicate one download from that journal, although it is being used many more times. Allowing students to download their own articles is one way of indicating that a particular journal is important to the curriculum.


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ICPSR Research Paper Competition – Due 1/31

Students:  Have you just completed a research paper?  Faculty:  Have you just read an outstanding research paper?  Why not submit it to The ICPSR Research Paper Competition?

ICPSR invites submissions for our 2013 Research Paper Competition from undergraduates and master’s students at member institutions. The purpose of the competitions is to highlight exemplary research papers based on quantitative analysis. We are holding three contests this year:

All competitions are open to students currently pursuing or who recently received undergraduate or master’s degrees.

The awards are $1,000 for first place and $750 for second place in each category.

More information is found here: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/ICPSR/prize/index.html


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Database Trial: PsycTESTS

Students are constantly looking for tests and measures to use as in their research and this 30 day  trial to PsycTESTS offers more than 2,000 standardized and published tests at  http://psycnet.apa. Take a look! Tell me what you think!

PsycTESTS serves as a repository for the full text of psychological tests and measures
as well as a rich source of structured information about the tests. A wide variety of test
types are included in PsycTESTS, including achievement and aptitude tests, intelligence
tests, tests of cognitive functioning, occupational tests, personality tests, and so on.

The database includes
■ The full text of psychological tests and measures, as available
■ Full bibliographic records and descriptive summaries of tests in each record
■ Descriptive summaries of commercially available tests with links to the publisher
■ A special interactive segment with tests from the Archives of the History of
American Psychology, for which APA has not yet identified literature

PsycTESTS includes three kinds of tests:

  • Unpublished tests ( those developed by researchers for use in their work but not made commercially available)
  • Tests from the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron. These tests may not be literature based.
  • Commercially available tests

All records in PsycTESTS are indexed and include fields for validity and reliability data
(when available), test purpose, construct, format, number of items, and more.


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ICPSR Unveils New Website Design

ICPSR, the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, unveiled its new website design on September 4, 2012. Explore the redesigned site.

ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.


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Welcome Back, Students!

Wondering how your subject librarian can help you this semester? Read on!

Librarians are happy to help you:

  • Find a topic for your research paper or project.
  • Find an article or book you are required to read for class.
  • Find a scholarly journal article.
  • Find background information on a topic.
  • Use a subject database to research a topic.
  • Find data or statistics.
  • Find news (current or historical) on your topic.
  • Evaluate potential sources.
  • Get organized with Refworks and individual research accounts.
  • Find information about conducting your own research project.
  • Cite your sources in APA or any other citation style.
  • And more!

Kristyna Carroll
610-519-5391
kristyna.carroll@villanova.edu
Room 223

Kimberley Bugg
610-519-3073
kimberley.bugg@villanova.edu
Room 227


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Welcome Back, Faculty!

Welcome back to campus! Falvey Memorial Library is ready to help you and your students meet all of your research goals this semester.

Don’t forget to take advantages of Falvey’s services:

If you are requiring your students to complete a research project, please consider scheduling a library workshop, or requesting a tailored course guide. Workshops can be conducted in one of the library’s classrooms, or a librarian would be happy to come to you. Act now: calendars fill quickly!

Librarians for Sociology, Criminal Justice, Psychology, Education, and Communication:

Kristyna Carroll
610-519-5391
kristyna.carroll@villanova.edu
Room 223

Kimberley Bugg
610-519-3073
kimberley.bugg@villanova.edu
Room 227


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Recent DVD Arrivals

The library has received many DVDs across the social sciences recently.  Ease into the new semester with some new documentaries or movies.  As always, see a few highlights below, or browse the full list.

SoLa: Louisiana Water Stories
Documentary Film (2010)
Investigates how the exploitation of Southern Louisiana’s abundant natural resources compromised the resiliency of its ecology and culture, thus multiplying the effects of the BP oil spill and Hurricane Katrina.

Waiting for “Superman”
Documentary Film (2011)
Provides an engaging and inspiring look at public education in the United States. [This documentary] has helped launch a movement to achieve a real and lasting change through the compelling stories of five unforgettable students such as Emily, a Silicon Valley eighth-grader who is afraid of being labeled as unfit for college, and Francisco, a Bronx first-grader whose mom will do anything to give him a shot at a better life.

Biutiful
Academy Award Nominee (2010)
Uxbal is a man on the wrong side of the law who struggles to provide for his children on the dangerous streets of Barcelona. As fate encircles him, Uxbal learns to accept the realities of life, whether bright, bad, or biutiful.

 

Not Just a Game
Documentary (2010)
We’ve been told again and again that sports and politics don’t mix. In this documentary, Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation magazine, takes viewers on a tour of the good, the bad, and the ugly of American sports culture — showing how sports have helped both to stabilize and to disrupt the political status quo throughout history. Explores how American sports, at their worst, have reinforced repressive political ideas and institutions by glamorizing things like militarism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, as well as looking at a history of rebel athletes who dared to fight for social justice beyond the field of play.

Beginners
Feature Film (2011)
Golden Globe® nominee Ewan McGregor (Star Wars I, II, III), Academy Award® nominee Christopher Plummer (Inside Man), and Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds) star in Beginners, an uplifting comedy about how funny and transformative life can be. When graphic designer Oliver (McGregor) meets free-spirited Anna (Laurent) shortly after his father (Plummer) has passed away, Oliver realizes just how much of a beginner he is when it comes to long-lasting romantic love. Memories of his father, who, following the death of his wife of 45 years, came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized, and wonderfully tumultuous gay life, encourage Oliver to open himself up to the potential of a true relationship. Inspired by writer/director Mike Mills’ own father. (Amazon.com product description)


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ICPSR Undergraduate Summer Internship

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world’s largest archive of digital social science data, is now accepting applications for its annual summer internship program. ICPSR is a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. ICPSR’s data are the foundation for thousands of research articles, reports, and books. Findings from these data are put to use by scholars, policy analysts, policy makers, the media, and the public.

Interns spend ten weeks from June 4 – August 10, 2012, at ICPSR (Ann Arbor, Michigan), during which they will:

  • Work in small groups and with faculty mentors to complete research projects resulting in conference-ready posters
  • Gain experience using statistical programs such as SAS, SPSS, and Stata to check data, working in both UNIX and Windows environments
  • Attend courses in the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research
  • Participate in a weekly Lunch and Lecture series that covers topics related to social science research and professional development.

Compensation:
$3,000 – $5000* stipend, room and partial-board in university housing, and a scholarship covering the cost of fees, texts, and materials for coursework in the ICPSR Summer Program.


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Syllabus Tip – Send Students to Library for Required Readings

If you will be requiring your students to read scholarly articles this semester, please consider sending them to the library to find the full text themselves (assuming the article is included in the library’s holdings). Rather than sending the students a PDF via email or Blackboard, or simply distributing a printout in class, allowing the students to search out the article on their own has several advantages.

Good for students

Allowing students to search the library’s resources to find the full text of an article from the citation builds familiarity with the library and its website. This exercise also demonstrates that the library is a valuable place to find scholarly resources. As an added bonus, your students will learn to interpret a citation. Finding the full text is good practice for scholarly research!

To help with this task, we provide detailed instructions for finding the full text using an article citation on our Finding Full Text Guide. Feel free to include this link on your syllabus. Librarians are also available to help by phone, email, chat, or in person.

Good for the Library

Sending students to the library’s website for full text articles being used in your class helps the library keep better statistics. We regularly evaluate our collection to ensure that it is meeting the needs of faculty and students. If you distribute a printout of an article to the students of your class, our records will only indicate one download from that journal, although it is being used by many more patrons. Allowing students to download their own articles is one way of indicating that a particular journal is important to the curriculum.


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Cited Reference Search Guide

A new research guide is available to help students navigate the Web of Science Cited Reference Search. The guide addresses what a cited reference search is, when to use it, and how to do it. The guide also features a brief instructional video demonstrating the search.

Cited Reference Search  – Web of Science Guide


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Last Modified: December 15, 2011

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