You Folks Are Busy!

I always knew Hopkins researchers and students were industrious, hardworking, and dedicated, but I never understood how busy you were until I started looking at use data from some of our electronic resources. Did you know that in 2006 every 3.75 minutes someone at Hopkins downloaded an article from Nature? That makes 16 Nature articles in an hour, 402 Nature articles in a day, 2,838 Nature articles a week, 11,352 Nature articles a month, or 147,086 Nature articles a year. Oh, BTW, that is just for regular Nature. That does not include the number of downloads for Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Reviews (Cancer, Molecular Cell Biology, or Neuroscience) or one of the other 65 Nature titles we subscribe to. All in all, in 2006 Hopkins scholars downloaded 443,975 Nature Publishing Group articles. That is a little more than 1 article every minute of every day of every week each year! You are busy, busy people. But that is really only the tip of the iceberg.

Continue reading You Folks Are Busy!…

JSTOR Tips and Tricks

For many of you tracking down scholarly journal articles online, JSTOR is a known and trusted archive of journal back issues. For those of you who really want to get all you can out of JSTOR, try out a search tip or two. Keep an eye out in our other databases, as well - a lot of these tips will transfer. The below tricks will help power up your basic searches:

• Use quotation marks to search for an exact phrase, like “fermat’s last theorem.”
• Remember your algebra: Group searches with parentheses and use AND/OR/NOT to create searches like “currency reform” AND (russia OR “soviet union”)
• Use a wildcard: A question mark ? will substitute for one character; an asterisk * will substitute for more than one. So, wom?n will find woman, women, and womyn. A search for behavior* will find behavior, behavioral, behaviorist, behaviorism, or behaviorally.

Want more? Wonder what a fuzzy search is? Or would you rather read & print all your tricks at once? JSTOR has an online list of search tips and tricks, tips on saving citations, and tips for printing JSTOR articles.

Even more below the cut:

Continue reading JSTOR Tips and Tricks…

5 Frequently Asked Library Questions … #3

#3. How do I get a library carrel?

That’s a tough one, my friend. The library is actually not in charge of doling carrels out to students. Academic departments have control over those pieces of prime MSEL real estate.

Here’s the skinny:

At the beginning of each semester, academic departments send MSEL Support Services a list of the names of graduate students assigned to carrel lockers.

Those lucky, chosen few then scurry down to the Support Services office on A Level of MSEL, pay a $5.00 refundable key deposit, then pick up their carrel key. That’s it. We only wish there could be more carrels out there for y’all to use.

Subject Guides to the Rescue!

It’s really late and you’re looking for information. How do you find public companies’ financial statements? Who knows what the molecular weight of acetylene is? How can you possibly finish a critique of Mary Cassatt’s “Five O’Clock Tea” without looking at it? And the librarians have all gone home for the evening! The nerve!
Fear not! We have provided subject guides to give you some direction when looking for information hidden away in the many resources of MSEL. From the library’s home page click on Subject Guides and you’re on your way.
BTW, the Business, Chemistry, and Art History subject guides can help answer the above questions.

Big News from the New York Times

Although The New York Times has taken some hits in the last few years (remember the Jayson Blair and Judith Miller controversies?), I still tend to think of the paper as rather staid and set in its ways. However, even The New York Times can change as evidenced by their letter to readers announcing that TimesSelect, a feature of nytimes.com, will be no more—all content of the newspaper back to 1987 is now freely available online (TimesSelect was previously only available to paid subscribers and colleges). However, many pre-1987 articles will have a $ icon next to them indicating you’ll have to pay a fee, so be careful while searching.

But for people who like to go straight to nytimes.com rather than through a database, this increased free access is great news. Note: you still need to create a free account for access to many articles. Want access prior to 1987 without having to pay? Check out the database New York Times Historical, 1851-2004 or see what other newspapers we have on our Newspapers page.

5 Frequently Asked Library Questions … #2

#2. The library doesn’t have what I want, what do I do?

We hope this doesn’t happen too often, but we know that, occasionally, we don’t have the book on Peruvian constitutional reform or the journal article on Emily Bronte’s relationship with her pet mastiff, Keeper, that you need.

Don’t fear! You have a few options:

Continue reading 5 Frequently Asked Library Questions … #2…

Of Women and Insects

Maria Sibylla Merian and the Histoire generale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l’Europe

The George Peabody Library is fortunate to possess a beautifully illustrated copy of a 1771 edition of Maria Sibylla Merian’s work, titled Histoire generale des insectes de Surinam et de toute l’Europe, with text in both French and Latin, and including twelve illustrations not originally included in the first edition published by Merian in 1705. An examination of Merian’s breathtaking work provides a remarkable wealth of information related to early works of natural history, women in science and early modern women artists, as well as early travel and colonialism. Continue reading Of Women and Insects…

3 Things You Need to Know About RefWorks

RefWorks is an online personal citation database and bibliography creator. Use RefWorks to store and organize those citations you’ve been scribbling down or emailing to yourself, or generate your bibliographies right in Word with little effort. Below are three things you need to know to get started:

1. JHU student, faculty, or staff? RefWorks is free and available in the myJohnsHopkins portal.

JHU has paid for a RefWorks account for all students, staff, and faculty affiliated with JHU, so if you’ve been paying for EndNote, listen up: You can import your Endnote citations and make use of the free RefWorks account you have through JHU. Get to RefWorks through the myJohnsHopkins portal. Select the library tab, and click on the red RefWorks icon to be automatically logged in.

Want to get started? Check out the RefWorks Quick Start Guide.

Continue reading 3 Things You Need to Know About RefWorks…

Scopus - Literature Searching and the H-Index

Scopus is a relatively new database that indexes the medical, life sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences literature. It is easy to use and has several cool features.

• Besides searching literature, it also searches the U.S. patent database, as well as the general web using the Scirus search engine.
• At the top of your results list is a display of the top journals, authors, document types, and subject areas from your results set, which you can add or delete from your search.
• Performing an author search gives you access to that author’s H-index. The H-index is a relatively new way to quantify authors’ productivity. It was developed by J.E. Hirsch, a physicist at UCSD.

Please try Scopus for your research and let me know what you think!

5 Frequently Asked Library Questions … #1

#1. What’s the deal with the Blue Ps?

If you’ve ever ventured down to D Level in MSEL or searched the library catalog for pleasure reading or fiction, you may have noticed that books with P call numbers are divided into two different areas: the regular (white) Ps and the blue Ps.

Are MSE librarians crazy? Is this our unusual way of supporting the Blue Jays? Did we decide one day that blue is our collective favorite color and should be incorporated into the library in more ways?

Since you asked …

Continue reading 5 Frequently Asked Library Questions … #1…