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SUS Spring Faculty Meeting Library Workshop: Beyond Academic Search Premier: Hidden Gems in the Library Databases

Information and Library Services

Staff of ILS

Information and Library Services

Published: March-April 2008

Category: » Information-and-library-services » Ils-workshops

During the SUS spring faculty meeting, held on February 9, the UMUC Library provided two sessions of a faculty workshop entitled Beyond Academic Search Premier: Hidden Gems in the Library Databases . This workshop highlighted some of the library database features that may not be as well-known to faculty. Given that each session was only allotted an hour in order to meet the day's meeting agendas, the librarians were only able to provide a “tasting” of some of the many available features.

LIBS 150 and Women's Studies Academic Director Beth Mulherrin, who also serves as the library liaison to the Department of Communication, Arts, and Humanities, discussed the database ScienceDirect. The title of this database can be misleading and Beth pointed out the arts and humanities and social sciences coverage available as well as the various alerts that can be created which will automatically notify faculty, via email or RSS feeds, when this database is updated with new content relevant to his/her search parameters, specified journals, specified topics, or when particular articles are cited in the works of others.

Reference and Instruction Librarian Robert Miller, library liaison to the Department of Social, Behavioral, Natural, and Mathematical Sciences, made faculty aware of the Sage Discovery Guides, a value-added product created by subject experts for the CSA databases (e.g., Criminology: A SAGE Full Text Collection, PAIS International, PAIS Archive, Psychology: A SAGE Full Text Collection, and Sociology: A SAGE Full Text Collection). These guides, available on a variety of topics in the areas of Arts and Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Technology, can serve as useful background reading for UMUC students.

The interface to the Web of Science databases (e.g., Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and BIOSIS Previews) recently changed. Robert presented an overview of the new search interface, which includes the ability to refine search results by subject areas, document types, authors, source titles, etc. In addition, Robert showed how to analyze results and set up alerts so that faculty can be alerted when new resources are added relevant to a specified search and every time a specified article is cited in another resource within the database.

NetLibrary, the library database of e-books, contains a variety of subject-specific encyclopedias, which are useful sources for background reading on a topic. Reference and Instruction Librarian Ed O'Donnell, library liaison to the Department of Business and Professional Programs (BUSN), gave a demonstration of how to locate subject encyclopedias and access them via NetLibrary.

The final segment pertained to the UMUC Ingenta Program, which allows faculty and Doctor of Management candidates to order full text articles for items listed in the Ingenta database of hard to find scholarly materials. Reference and Instruction Librarian Ryan Shepard , library liaison to the Department of Computer Information Systems and Technology and Criminal Justice, Emergency Management, Fire Science, Homeland Security, and Legal Studies, explained how this program can be used by faculty to further their own scholarly research or to enhance class-reading lists in electronic reserves.

As a follow-up to the session, a Web page was created of the topics covered, which includes a review of all that was covered. All faculty are invited to review this page.

The library welcomes an opportunity to present more such faculty workshops and invites your suggestions of possible topics to be covered.