Reference Universe - Worth A Second Look

It is easy to overlook, but Reference Universe is vastly improved in content and searching. For example, a search on Irrigation was slow. Two years ago, this subject search allowed you enough time to 'go for a cup of coffee and come back to get results finally...' to now being WOW... I can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and get 10 citations on "irrigation" before getting to the "cious" part of the word -- Reference Universe is FAST.

There is a higher level of detail in Reference Universe then the regular ibistro catalog for hard to answer questions using print resources and it even has a few electronic resources we have access to.

Database content...
- 20,000 works from print and e-resource form with table of contents and index citations, 100's recently added just in June alone....
- Prominent publsher with the books in our collection from Gale, Greenwood, Springer and others..
- Patrons stumble upon seredipitous/useful facts to what they are looking for...

Keys to searching the database well...
- Use the browse searching if your unsure how to search. It functions similiar to catalog subject search.
- Use of phrase searching is the main way to use the databae.
- Use of "and" or "or" boolean searching in a strict sense does not work -- think phrase searching.

Things to watch for while searching...
- Each result should be checked for a title availability searching in Ibistro. Due to ISBN linking, format, and edition problems e-resources/books we do have in the collection say (prior editions) to links in database might not show up in Ibistro eventhough it is on the shelf or available online.
- AccessScience/GVRL direct full-text links within the database recently went down... we are hoping to restore these soon.
- If a title sounds to scholary for a public library, we probably don't have it -- try ILL or CofC if this is what the patron wants and it seems there is NO alternative for the needed info...

Job Hunting Resource - Part 4 Furthering Your Education

This is the forth post in a series on Job Hunting and the South Carolina Pathways.org website. Previous posts on the topic are available in 1, 2 and 3. Are you looking at continuing your education in a degree or non-degree program? The Kuter “Considering Education or Training” section may help.

The education or training component covers degree and non degree programs for further areas of study you may want to consider. The schools profiled in detail are based on in person classroom settings or online throughout the United States, military installations and US territories. Various tabs such as “name and location”, “school and campus characteristics”, “programs and majors” and “admissions and costs” all allow a person to narrow there list of schools down by various criteria in one search list combined in a “see list” format.

Overall, the Kuter education component is very useful in considering furthering your education, tuition costs, application process and other preferences associated with selecting a school of your choice and desired education outcomes.

Literature Resources from Gale - More Ebooks Available Within

Literature Resources from Gale now includes additional e-books that were previously just in Gale Virtual Reference Library. The purpose of Literature Resources from Gale is the ability to search simultaneously Literature Resource Center, Gale Virtual Reference Library, LitFinder, Twayne and Scribner Writers Series in one place.

Some of the e-books within Literature Resources from Gale include: Contemporary Novelists 7th ed, Contemporary Poets 7th ed, Drama for Students (vols. 1-25), Literary Movements for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Literary Movements 2nd (vols. 1-2), Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works , (vols 1-5) Novels for Students (Vols 1-28), Poetry for Students (Vols 1-29), Shakespeare for Students: Critical Interpretations of Shakespeare's Plays and Poetry , 2nd ed., (vols 1-3); and Short Stories for Students (Vols 1-26). Over time, additional ebook and other content is being added.

Reference Universe - Need for Speed Answered...

Reference Universe in the past was a product you could go for a cup of coffee and still be waiting on search results... Recently, search result speed was greatly enhanced. The same general search strategies of using just one or two words in a phrase still works best and it will be nice to see possibly boolean searching become available some day. Bottom line, by far the faster retrieval time of search results is the best improvement to the database outside of content since we got it a couple of years ago or so...

Magill On Literature - Visual Search.

EBSCO has enhanced the search interface for Magill On Literature. The visual feature builds on a previous enhancements. There is a drill down menu that is very responsive and quick. It does take a little while to get used to, but you can still stick with the list of results in traditional form below the visual search screen.

Composing Email.

A few pithy thoughts from Jakob Nielson and useit.com and his 10/20/08 Alertbox on Transactional Email...

Good email that respects users' time and quickly tells them what they need to know can do wonders for your customer service reputation.

In general, you should write a message according to the users' priorities, starting with the information they're typically looking for.

..processing email is stressful. Users frequently told us that they were too busy to deal with certain email messages, and that they considered any fluff in messages a waste of time. When they check their email, users are typically dealing with multiple requests for their time — whether from their boss, colleagues, or family. People just want to be done with most email, and quickly move past anything that is not absolutely essential.

Jackob Nielsen also goes on to stress making subject lines relevant to users reduces the chances an email will get deleted in the process of pruning/deleting SPAM messages.

Hathi Trust Ditigal Library - Great Ebooks Online

The Hathi Trust provides a combined collection of public domain/content restricted titles from primarily academic libraries in ebook form online. According to the Hathi website on November 8th, 2008, there are approximately 353,000 titles like Charleston Furniture 1700-1825 which are publicly available online, while approximately an additional 2 million are online with digital rights management restrictions. The Hathi Trust now has a beta ebook search website.

Gale Literature Resource Center Updates...

Gale recently updated the Literature Resource Center (LRC) interface. The interface looks closer to PowerSearch with tabbed results and other nicely defined limiters such as peer reviewed sources, primary sources, work overviews and others by kind of documents in an easy to find and use check box system. Overall, the enhancements are really nice. When you get time take a look at the new features or view the guided tour in PowerPoint.

Magill On Literature Gets an Update...

The Magill on Literature resource tool has recently been updated with some search enhancements. Some of the new features as listed on the website include:

• A new simpler basic searching screen
• The ability to preview an article or image by mouseover
• New result list
• New detail display
• New search history capability
• Enhanced personalization features
• New organization of limiters and expanders
• New search modes including SmartText
• URLs that can be bookmarked.

Novelist gets Enhancements

Fiction reading suggestions and recommendations database Novelist recently underwent some enhancements. The following list of updated features comes directly from the EBSCO website:

• A single search bar at the homepage allows you to enter author, title, key word, descriptive word or series name.
  


• You can also enter Boolean phrases and search tags.



• Search results that not only retrieve all of the book titles that meet the criteria for the search you entered, but also retrieve a list of all of our feature content that meet the search criteria. All of the content at the Result List is tabbed so there is a tab for books, a tab for Author Read-alikes, a tab for Awards, a tab for Book Discussion Guides and so on.



• An information rich homepage that puts all of our content right at your fingertips. You can browse to all of your favorite feature content (BookTalks, Recommended Reads reading lists, Author Read-alikes and more).



• A completely revamped Readers' Advisory section on the NoveList homepage, which includes professional resources for you, as an individual, and for the staff at your library to improve RA skills.



• Expanded Result Lists that include book jacket images, links to feature content, a link to your library's catalog and more. We know that when you are busy, you want as much data at the search results page as possible. However, our book record is as robust as ever with links to related authors, related content and reviews.

Book Review Index - Search by Format type Easily

Audiobooks, ebooks, periodicals and book reviews by format type just got easier to find with Book Review Index Online. In many cases, it is a real pain to find a review based on the format of the title in formal review sources. Amazon is great for mass market or niche titles and sometimes format can run over various editions, but for expensive reference materials, Book Review Index Online is great to have for standard review sources. There is the annoying factor though that the results page is in index form, but it is an improvement from having to just guess on the format type of an article title or go through several entries that are not in the desired format. Bottom line, Book Review Index is a great sources for finding reviews on titles by format so much quicker than before.

LitFinder - Strong In Poetry Content

LitFinder is most practically used for finding poems. Poem content is in abstract, full-text, and in explanation form from public domain or under copyright in poetry books. Subject searching at times is very spotty for poems. The keyword searching for poems on topics is useful. It is that catch 22 going between using the regular catalog to find poetry books on a topic or by doing a sometimes imprecise keyword search and then (limiting results to full-text of poems) or finding content by browsing. The database also covers short stories, speeches, essays, and plays in which this blogpost will only briefly cover. This post primarily addresses poetry due to length, to view the rest of the article below the tags, click the read more link.



On the LitFinder database the content description covers:

POETRY -
* 125,000+ full-text poems including 25,000 copyrighted poems
* 850,000+ poem citations and excerpts
* Subject Access
* Contemporary Works
* Poem Explanations
* Kids’ Korner
* Biographies and Pictures
* Glossary

ADDITIONAL CONTENT AREAS -
* Essays,
* Short Stories,
* Speeches,
* Plays,

Browsing Poetry -
There are so many different combinations in which a person can browse for content. At times, it can be a little disconcerting.

A Person can search for poetry or content by:
* Genre
* Subject
* Contemporary Work
* Kid's Korner
* Full Text Availability

Browse or Faceted Searching -
I find this to be practically tricky when your looking for content, but useful when you really kind of think about how material is grouped and searched.

You can structure a search in so many different ways. It is similar to setting up several true or false statement searches being: want full text yes or no? want to search by subject if so pick one of several choices. Faceted or browsing search breaks content into numerous groupings based on optional choices.

The browse menu is best used when a person things like an indexer using controlled terms use mother for motherhood, mothering, mother figures. A person can get more precise or broad searching results when thinking like an indexer and keeping in mind to look for similar terms you may have initially thought of, but covering closely related topics as well. The trick is to use the predefined terms already set in motion when using the browse menu.

A weakness of LitFinder is when you do use the browse function most of the terms are not in alphabetical and or there is a large splattering of terms that seem to be random at times and then some show up in quasi alphabetical order.

Keyword and Advanced Searching.
This section pretty much speaks for itself.

Explanations of select poems are available, but these are not as numerous as the number of poems in the database. This section Is at times really spotty on volume of content.

The keyword searching for poems on topic draws upon poem titles and select groupings. I had difficulty figuring out as to whether a poem was selected based on a term within the poem, explanation, or title and how the search generates relevancy results. Relevancy searching seemed to be primarily based on title keywords, poem text, followed by poem explanations. I did not do extensive searching on keyword
searching, but ask anyone who has or has an inclination on this matter to please post a comment with your thoughts and experience on poetry keyword searching.

The Kids Korner, Biographies, and Glossary sections are nice add-ons that help Round out the product as well as have some practical and useful information as well.

In comparisons terms, Granger’s Index to Poetry has been a poetry standard In libraries for years. LitFinder in many ways does the same thing Granger’s online does, and at the time of a formal comparison, demonstrated substantially more content and value.

ADDITIONAL Content Areas -
Essays, Plays, Short Stories, and Speeches are generally derived from printed works, many still under copyright protection, and in some cases are also available in the public domain online. Litfinder does not have a vast online collection in each of these areas, but it has a fairly sizeable amount of content.

Bottom Line, A majority of patrons and staff, in my casual observations, seem to find the poetry content in Litfinder is the most useful part of the database.

Literature Resource Center db - Dictionary of Literary Biography

Literature Resource Center has Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) originally in print format only. This print source in online format still continues to provides clear, concise and well written author biographies in text only format. The same content found in the print volumes, with some exceptions detailed in this articles such as: author images, original manuscript examples, places or things instrumental in picture form to the development of authors profiled most of the time can be found elsewhere or when known -- going back to the print source.


There are so many numerous advantages of the electronic version in comparison to the pint. But, occasionally the print (DLB) has what the web version does not being:

1) Author Images – alternatives sources are in other research database or by doing generic images searches on the individual. Many times, doing a generic web image search on American Memory part of the Library of Congress, Google, Yahoo, may yield scholarly societies with such images online.

2) Manuscript image examples - many times scholarly societies will track original manuscripts. For example, the Joseph Conrad society maintains a list of locations for his original manuscripts where known.

3) Places of importance images - local historical societies, periodical searches, and reputable sources such as the Library of Congress may have place location pictures or images within desired time periods.

Novel Reading Advice?

Want a book about a veterinarian who meets an anti terrorist specialist and romance is involved during a dog race? Novelist, What Do I Read Next, and Books In Print - Fiction Connection are excellent products that provide suggestions of books for
titles to read based on subject, plot, genre, and other read-a-like titles. Wilson Catalogs will also be covered briefly, but this database primarily serves a different purpose. This article intends to cover the strengths and advantages of these four different databases available either with home access or in-library only.

Most of the databases have standardized search features in assisting finding great or similar books by: Author, Title, Read A Likes, Genre Search, Award Winners, and the (who, what, where and when) plot summaries. The breakdown is intended to provide the areas in which the database is different from alternatives.

Novelist
(home access and in-library)
This resource is strong in the area of suggestion other related books by desired and required plot points. It builds upon numerous reviews sources such as: Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, and other sources. The database has the ability to search for topics that are must have and desired for subject areas of interest. It is probably the highest ranking of the reader's advisory research databases in that search provide excellent on topic results and that it provides some book discussion guides on many titles in the database.

Books In Print - Fiction Connection Component
(In-Library Access Only)
The Fiction Connection portion of Books in Print covers recently added titles. The strength of this database is in the numbers. It also covers titles that are about ready to go into print, but are not available for delivery.

What Do I Read Next?
(Home Access and In-Library)
This databases builds upon a smaller set of books, but it is still useful with best sellers lists and additional reviews. It does not contain as many titles as Books-In-Print Fiction Connection or the Novelist product. It is a part of the DISCUS package in which the database is provided through the SC State Library

Wilson Catalogs
(Home Access and In-Library)
Best of the best recommendations for materials based on subjects or fiction a source for quality titles/reviews is the Wilson Catalogs database. It works well as a collection development tool. To select, keep, or weed a book based on the review and currency of a topic is what this resource provides. It is a key tool used in collection development.

Okay, so you may be curious as to what novel has a plot about a veterinarian who meets an anti terrorist specialist and romance is involved during a dog race? The answer is "On Thin Ice" by Cherry Adair. Bottom line, the two most frequently used research databases on http://www.ccpl.org/content.asp?name=Site&catID=10221&parentID=5406 for readers advisory are: Novelist and Books In Print - Fiction Connection component.

When Less is More in Literary Criticism

Confounded with an overload of information in literary criticism on Mark Twain or you just want the major plot points to a work? There is that dilemma when just 3 to 5 paragraphs of criticism and information on a literary great is perfect and 10 pages is to much. There is that dilemma as well when 4 pages of plot summary is perfect in comparison to 15 in a printed literary criticism. The following article will look at two kinds of sources a literature encyclopedia and plot points. For more information click the read more link that follows.



Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature is available online in Literature Resource Center when selecting the menu box [Encyclopedia of Literature]. This work covers: "10,000 entries covering authors, works, terms, and topics - from all areas and all parts of the world" from cover of print work. This is a great source when you need authoritative information in condensed form.


MasterPlots is available online in Magil On Literature db which is another way to get the general gist of a work quickly. Case in point. Patron came in looking for a few pages to share with kids about the Marriage of Figaro before the play was preformed at the Gaillard the following day. The MasterPlots source for the play was perfect and the patron was highly pleased. MasterPlots can also serve the same function at times as Cliff Notes in covering the plot of a major work and giving the major points quickly.

Overall, these are just two sources within two great databases. You may find both helpful when you need just a little bit of information and not an exhaustive
amount of info will do.

Steven S.

Literature Resource Center -- Literary Index --

Digging Deeper in ...
Literature Resource Center(LRC) this database does not have the complete text of the Gale Literary Criticism Series. Most of the time, just enough of the database will do, but sometimes obscure or lessor known authors may get missed when not checking the Gale Literary Index. Sometimes, when it is a really obscure author of days gone by the Gale Literary Index may be your most significant lead to criticism not found online, but in print form. Or the case maybe when the electronic version is just not enough...





That said, lets look at Ludvig Holberg 1684-1754 (and compare
notes between the print and electronic versions).

There are 4 authored articles on Holberg, Ludvig in LRC - Lit Criticisms There are 12 authored articles on Holberg, Ludvig in Literary Criticisms from 1400 to 1800 Volume 6 pp 255-286. Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800 Volume 6.

LRC Online edition authored articles on Holberg
- 4 - Work Criticisms
Holberg, Lewis
Payne, William Morton
Gosse, Edmund
Campbell, Oscar James

Print edition authored articles on Holberg.
- 13 - Work Criticisms
Holberg, Lewis
August, Wilhelm Schlegel
Brandes, George
Payne, William Morton
Gosse, Edmund
Campbell, Oscar James
Skard, Sigmund
Nicoll, Allardyce
Times Literary Supplement
Mitchell, P.M.
Jansen, F.J Billeskov
Lundquist, Anne S
Parente, James A

There are 0 authored literary criticism grouped articles on Lynn Riggs in LRC - Lit Criticisms. There are 10 authored criticism articles in Twentieth Century Literary Criticisms Volume 50 (with a publication date of 1995)

Lynn Riggs 1899-1954
American Playright and Poet.

LRC online edition authored articles on Riggs
-0 - Work Criticisms

Twentieth Century Literary Criticisms Volume 50 (with a publication date of 1995)
authored articles on Riggs
- 10 - Work Criticisms
Vestal, Stanley
Zabel, Morton Dauwen
Gregory, Horace
Van Doren, Mark
Atkinson, Brooks J.,
Anderson, John
Lockbridge, Richard
Krutch, Joseph Wood
Erhard, Thomas
Braunlich, Phyllis Cole

Word counts would spell out the differences numerically in content, but I found that type face, font size, spacing, paper, margins, made all of it unfair comparison. Only counting words and reviewing content may adequately show the differences other than the number of criticism essays appearing in print form, but not online.

Bottom Line. Keep in mind the Literature Resource Center(LRC) database has the Literature Index which is a wonderful key to some great criticism articles that do not appear online and only in print form. Most of the time, Literature Resource Center(LRC) does a wonderful job at providing just enough criticism to fulfill the need. Literature Index is just another tool to find hidden and overlooked criticisms.