Library Facebook and Twitter

For additional sources of Library updates, news and information, RMU Library now has both a Facebook and a Twitter account.

Google “RMU Library Twitter”
-and-
“RMU Library Facebook”

Since our blog seems to be more of a one way communication channel:), perhaps our Facebook or Twitter pages will elicit more feedback from the RMU Community (?) ….

 

Introducing ProQuest Central

RMU Library has recently acquired ProQuest Central. You may not even notice the change, if you typically access ProQuest through the ProQuest icon link, but if you go to the Databases A-Z page through “Find Articles,” then “Databases A-Z,” you will notice a longer list of available ProQuest databases.

Some of the key databases that I would like to bring to your attention that are part of this new package include:

SnapShots
SnapShots is a collection of industry and company profiles, similar to Datamonitor, though the information is unique and does not seem to duplicate what is available through Datamonitor.

-and-

ProQuest Accounting & Tax
This database includes a large number of scholarly and trade publications in the fields of accounting & taxation. It also includes AICPA publications, accounting dissertations, conference proceedings from accounting conferences and more.

Both of these two new highlighted resources that are part of the new ProQuest package will be great resources for our business students, staff and faculty.

ProQuest Issues Fixed

ProQuest Problems have been fixed.

All ProQuest links will temporarily say ProQuest Central (which includes all of the old ProQuest Subject Databases & much more ..). The subject databases will all soon be listed as well.

New Interfaces & New Content

Both Project Muse and ProQuest have recently debuted new interface designs. WilsonWeb databases (Education Full Text, Library Lit, Humanities Index etc.) are now available on the EBSCOhost platform as Wilson has recently been acquired by EBSCO.

The new ProQuest interface has a very clean, streamlined look yet offers a couple of additional search modifiers:  “Figures & Tables” and “Data & Reports.”
Both of these searches are options in ABI Inform and should be helpful for many of our Business students and others.

RMU Library has also upgraded to ProQuest Central. ProQuest Central is the largest full-text database in the academic market today. Many subject specific ProQuest databases are available in ProQuest Central, including: ProQuest Nursing, ProQuest Accounting & Tax, ProQuest Science, ProQuest Psychology, ProQuest Career & Technical Education, ProQuest Newspapers.

Project Muse has an attractive new platform. Search results now display very similarly to searches in SAGE Premier. Speaking of SAGE, SAGE Premier includes several dozen new journals with the release of SAGE Premier 2012.

Enjoy!

And, as always, let us know if you have related questions or concerns.

Library Closed: Dec. 22 – Jan. 2

RMU Library will be closed from Thursday, December 22nd 2011 through Monday, January 2nd 2012. The Library will open again on Tuesday, January 3rd at 8:15 am. For more details about Library hours see:

http://sentry.rmu.edu/web/cms/schools/library/about/Pages/hours.aspx

Enjoy your holiday break!!

Extended Library Hours

Just a reminder that the Library is open until midnight every night this week until Friday.

Friday and Saturday hours remain the same with the Library closing at 5pm.

Searching ROBCAT from your iPhone

Have you ever tried to look up a book in the RMU Library using a smart phone?

There is actually a pretty easy, user friendly way to do it …

Go to:
http://robertmorrisuniversity.worldcat.org/m/

– and enter a keyword search in the search box …

Thanksgiving Holiday Hours

Just a reminder that the RMU Library is still open today …

We will then be closed for the Thanksgiving Holiday. The Library will re-open on Sunday, November 27 at 1:00 pm.

For a more detailed list of library hours, see:

http://sentry.rmu.edu/web/cms/schools/library/about/Pages/hours.aspx

Several eBook Trials

FYI .. .There are several eBook collections the Library is currently trialing …

Palgrave Connect eBooks

Springer eBooks

EBSCO eBooks

Please, check them out and let us know what you think!

Because we are already EBSCO customers and already own a fair number of EBSCO eBooks, the entire EBSCO eBook collection is currently accessible from off campus as well. Since we are not yet Springer or Palgrave customers, these two trials are limited to on campus usage.

For additional RMU Library eBook information, see:
http://sentry.rmu.edu/web/cms/schools/library/research-assistance/Pages/eBooks.aspx

Hoover’s – Database Cancellation

Hoover’s Company Information database is being cancelled.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding Hoover’s or this decision, please contact Emily Paladino. For Hoover’s Company Profiles and other corporate financial information available through Hoover’s, refer to Hoover’s Company Profiles through LexisNexis or Datamonitor.

Springer eBook Trial

RMU Library currently has access to the Springer eBook collection on a trial basis.

From any computer on campus, access the trial by clicking on:
http://www.springerlink.com/books/

Springer is one of the largest, if not the largest, STM [science, technical and medical] book publishers.

EBSCO Mobile App!

EBSCOhost has a new app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users. (If you have a Blackberry or an Android or if you just don’t like downloading apps, you can still utilize EBSCO effectively through EBSCO Mobile).

The new iPhone app is available for free from the iTunes App Store. RMU users just need to navigate to any EBSCO database interface page through the RMU Library web site, scroll down to the bottom of the search page and click on “New:EBSCOhost iPhone / iPod Touch application.”

Upcoming EBSCOhost apps will include an app for Android and an eBook reader app.

New Scanner for Students!

Just to alert anyone looking for an open access scanner on campus to scan book pages, photos, notes, etc. — we have a slick new scanner in the Reference Area of the Library. It is a simple touch screen self-scanning device; you can email or download scanned images.

Welcome Students!

Nice to see your smiling faces back on campus today. Stop by and see us at the Library or at the welcome tables at Sewall Center this morning.

Fall Semester Library Hours Begin Monday

Currently, you can access Fall Semester Library Hours here:

http://sentry.rmu.edu/web/cms/schools/library/about/Pages/hours.aspx

Just a reminder, the Library is closed again this weekend.

World Geography Database

The ABC-CLIO database, World Geography, is temporarily only available on campus.

Off campus access to this database will resume as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

Integration of RMU PGH CTR Books

Notes from the Dean on the recent integration of Pittsburgh Center Library books…

“Last week two important milestones occurred as we reached the end of the Pittsburgh Center Library closing project.

On Thursday, the records deletion project of withdrawn books from the Pittsburgh Center was completed.  Approximately 12,800 records were deleted from OCLC (our
bibliographic utility) and ROBCAT (our online catalog).  This was a herculean effort accomplished in a relatively short period of time.

On Friday morning, the last box of Pittsburgh Center books that were in storage was unpacked and all books are now on “a” shelf.  Ninety percent of all Pittsburgh and Moon books are on their correct shelf and by the end of this week all
circulating books will be in their new home.  There are no more books in
storage.

When we began this project in October it seemed as if it might take years to get all the records updated and everything back in its rightful place. But with the help of some very talented and dedicated people, what could have taken years only took months; and very few months at that.

Librarians love library-speak and love to talk shop and tell you how many records we’ve added/deleted suppressed, etc.  We love to talk about location codes, date-source-cost information, 245 fields, 090 field, local rules, and all sorts of things it takes to put a book on the shelf or take a book off the shelf.  And to the
ordinary user, it should and does look seamless.  But it’s not. I’ve never counted them (and maybe one day I will), but I suspect that if we did a flow chart of how many steps it takes to process a book purchase, from beginning to end, it would be well over fifty.  (It may even be closer to one hundred).  This was one of those projects with copious library-speak and while it may sound boring to the average Joe, it sounded pretty nifty to all of us.

To update the records in ROBCAT and OCLC to reflect our holdings in both databases and to be able to process over 30,000 items in less than ten months is nothing short of miraculous given our staffing levels.   The Pittsburgh Center book collection was a treasure and many of those treasures are now sitting on the Moon Campus books stacks.  You won’t be able to identify them in ROBCAT, but you will be able to identify them as you take them off the shelf and look inside the back cover.  Once you see the PGH stamp you’ll know that this was a book whose noble life has been happily extended.”

Reminder: No evening library hours

The library will not be open weekends or evenings until we begin fall semester hours on August 22.

E-book Kool-Aid, by our director, Dr. Fran Caplan

Who’s Drinking the Kool Aid?

Last night my friend asked me why I haven’t purchased an iPad2 for myself. It’s a logical question given what I do for a living. My knee-jerk (and actual) response was, “I cannot deal with one more electronic device,” which is and is not true. My power strip has no room for one more plug and with two cell phones, one iPhone, two Kindles, a netbook, a laptop, one digital camera and a partridge in a pear tree, I am on severe overload. But I have a feeling that an iPad2 is not far away. I imagine I will use it for the applications, but what I really want to use it for is reading books the way they were meant to be read.
I just finished reading my first non-fiction title on one of the two Kindles I own. It wasn’t until after I finished reading the last page of the text that I realized that the book had a pretty hefty notes section in the back that provided some very meaty supplemental information. I felt cheated.
Every day I am surrounded by articles, emails, advertisements, etc., regarding e-books. (Clearly it’s an occupational hazard). And until today I felt somewhat guilty that our library was not providing our users with access to thousands upon thousands of these treasures. (Yes, we do have a small e-book collection, but nothing compared to other libraries across the country). Why haven’t we jumped on the bandwagon like so many of our sister institutions to provide access to the latest and greatest titles of all time? And after today’s reflection, I think I have a partial answer. Indeed, we should be making available certain titles in certain genres; but we need to be careful about what we will acquire and make sure our patrons understand why we are limiting our offerings.
To start this dialogue we should understand the different types of e-books that are out there. In our library, we have classified them into four areas: textbooks, reference works, scholarly works and fun stuff. Up until last week, I only used my Kindle for fun stuff and I found it to be great for that type of reading. I can adjust the font size to accommodate my aging eyes, which has helped alleviate much of the eyestrain I was experiencing when doing extensive reading. But after reading my non-fiction book this week, I realized I sacrificed some serious content just so my peepers could be more comfortable. I am not sure I would do that again anytime soon.
The professional literature tells me that the advantages for e-books include: anywhere/anytime access, easy storage, good for quick reference and searching, and the potential for clear graphics and images, just to name a few. I find this to be true, but I also find this to be a touch limiting. I’m the kind of person who when reading a work of non-fiction gets out those little flags that mark pages so that I can refer back to the notes that I have made on those pages. (I do this sometimes with fiction as well). I also use the flags to keep my place in case the book has any endnotes. This is virtually impossible to do with any of e-book readers out there. And until these e-readers undergo a radical change to accommodate the different ways people read books, I don’t see our library drinking the kool aid and jumping on the bandwagon to provide scholarly works any time soon just because we can. As another friend of my mine used to say, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

Fran’s latest Slovakia travel update …

This turns out to be a perfect day to blog as this trip winds down.  Marcel Minutolo and I have spent the past two days in Martin, a city of about 60,000 people located approximately 225 kilometers northeast of Bratislava.  It’s a beautiful area and before the revolution the main industry consisted of building military tanks for the Russian.  Unemployment is rather high, however the area is home to agriculture, mining and industry including: lime and dolomit pits, production of iron ore and copper mining, engineering – TV set production; textile industry, wood and furniture industry, metallurgy, rubber industry, paper and pulp.  There are several artificial dams, that provide water sport activities.

The National Library of Slovakia, which is located in Martin, presently employs about 220 people, 70% of whom are librarians.  Opened in 1974, the facility houses over 4 million objects including books, manuscripts, photographs, and recordings.  The National Library is a cutting edge leader in the area of digitization and has four high-end book scanners on which they are in the process of digitizing all the books in the collection.  The Library has or is engaged in digitization projects with Stanford University, The Library of Congress and the European Union in addition to supporting the individual libraries of Slovakia.  The Library reports to the Ministry of Culture, from whom they receive their funding, and will continue to do so until the year 2020, at which time I believe they will become an independent entity.

Yesterday we spent time with General Director,  Dr. Dushan Katuscak, who provided us with an overview of the library, its funding and a summary of their various projects.   We then toured the book conservation area where eight people repair and restore books from the collection.  Each restoration takes approximately 100 man hours and each person sees the process through from beginning to end.  It is amazing to watch these people perform absolute magic, with the before and after pictures being reminiscent of Houdini.  It is indeed an art and a science.  We then toured the photograph collection, which consists of approximately 250,000 items.  It was quite impressive and overwhelming.

This morning we met with Jozef Dzivak, Director of Conservation and Digitisation Center.  He also works at the Slovak Technical University and is a consultant as well.  I guess with four children, one job just isn’t enough.  A chemical engineer by profession, Jozef is responsible for much of the digitization processes that go on in the Library and is also responsible for improving work flows and efficiencies.

Bureaucracy is alive and well in Slovakia and I think it makes for some  interesting challenges in relation to these cutting edge initiatives.  The technology is available, but funding and innovation are constrained by laws and the lack of incentives.  I believe this is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of their work.

A few parting observations as this will most likely be the last of my blogs.  First, this has just been a wonderful experience for me and I am so glad I got to see the beauty that exists in this part of the world.  While the USA is a great place to live, there are other equally great places to live and I believe this is one of them.  It’s not unusual to see churches built in the twelfth century dotting the landscapes.  The architecture pre- World War II is beautiful and I cannot count the times I thought we were on a movie set and not on the real street.  Second, the people here look like the people at home.  Third, there is an unusual amount of graffiti in both Bratislava and Martin.  I don’t know if it exists all over the country, but I am surprised at how much of it there is.  Fourth, I am also surprised by how little green spaces or parks there are.  It was explained to me that people go to the forest, hence no real need for parks.  Fifth, I’m not sure what the natives do for recreation.  I think they bike and hike and a good number of them hop on trains over the weekend to areas outside the cities, but you don’t see people congregating in parks, or on ball fields, etc.  Sixth, you don’t know how good we have it with CVS, Walgreens, etc.  The drug stores or apothecaries are like fortresses and you literally cannot get anything off the shelf.  Everything is locked up and you must be escorted to the shelves by an employee.  That was an eye opener.  And finally, soft drinks are warm, ice is hard to find, and air-conditioning is even more rare.  I cannot wait to get home to air conditioning and Zoe, in that order!!