Peninsula College Library 2.0 Meets Web 2.0

Peninsula College Library recently attended the Quarterly Library Instruction Roundtable, sponsored by the University of Washington Instruction & Information Literacy Working Group. The meeting took place Dec. 10, 2007 in the Allen Auditorium of the University of Washington Suzzallo Library. This is a brief first-hand report.

There were about 20 librarians in attendance. The meeting began with the presentation of three demonstrations. 1) screen casting of both product and concept tutorials, 2) a video of a library catalog concept tutorial, and 3) services for remote and online users.

SCREEN CASTING DEMONSTRATION
The product tutorials are point-of-use tutorials on subjects like “How to Use PubMed.” They can be linked to through a “Help” or “How To” tab on the library home page. Although these may duplicate vendor tutorials, they are customized with local features like “connecting to full text.”

Parts of concept tutorials, were presented. Concept tutorials include aids such as “Known Citation Searching,” “Finding Measurement Tools,” “Legal Research,” “Finding Drug Information,” etc. which are focused on a process involving the use of several different products.

VIDEO DEMONSTRATION
UW received a 21st Century Grant to buy video making equipment and they are using it to address conceptual problems, such as “What is a catalog?,” a video they produced using a 40’s/50’s style reminiscent of government training films, to add an element of humor.

SERVICES TO REMOTE AND ONLINE USERS
This presentation looked at library use of Web 2.0 and asked the questions: “Do librarians fit well in social networking? Do students want us there?” Instead of creating YouTube videos, FaceBook pages, blogs, wikis, etc. to attempt overt or covert library instruction, the suggestion was to involve students in active learning, for example the creation of movies on research skills.

SUMMARY OF SOME DISCUSSION POINTS

INTEGRATION
One especially relevant criticism voiced early in the discussion: This all seems piecemeal. There is no integration. There is no structure. We can only go so far marketing products with adlib stuff without a context. Knowing when and why to use a tool (or a library!) is as important as knowing how.

ASSESSMENT
How do you know students are using something? Are site meters and Google Analytics really providing us with significant feedback? To be effective, assessment should be embedded in courses where feedback mechanisms can be built in, such as student journaling of how they feel about IL (information literacy) components, whether learning styles are being addressed, etc. Discipline faculty can provide feedback to library faculty.

MISCELLANEOUS
Librarians can provide tools, organize the tools (indicating which are beginning level, which are useful for a certain problem, etc.), but… (and I quote)…: “The 50 minute library lecture is dead.”

There was some discussion of using course management systems, such as Moodle, to create a rich IL environment which includes videos, text, quizzes, chat rooms, etc. for distance learners.

Conclusory Note:
This meeting confirmed that Peninsula College is addressing the same issues that educational institutions in the I-5 corridor are addressing, with the same level of success. The Peninsula College Library is already Web 2.0-enabled with YouTube, MySpace, and Google blog presence and will soon (July 2008) have a new library instruction classroom to promote active learning using electronic and print resources.

New Library Periodical Reading Area

Here are the views from the outside and inside of the Library Periodicals Reading Area in the process of construction. The view from inside the Periodicals Reading Area looks out towards Canada across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Opening of the new Library is scheduled for June 2008.

HIV and Dental Care Bibliography

HIV and Dental Care Bibliography contains citations for selected journal articles published in the ten year period from 1997 to 2006. The entries are arranged in reverse chronological order and come from Stanford's Highwire Press database at: http://highwire.stanford.edu The full-text of all the articles is available free of charge from Highwire.

Other open access archives with dental journals, such as PubMedCentral (PMC) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), are also listed.

What Can An Excellent Library Do For Student Learning?

What Can An Excellent Library Do For Student Learning? notes key research findings from the DEEP (Documenting Effective Educational Practice) Project and NSSE (National Survey of Student Engagement) research.

Some ways to promote academic challenge and greater student engagement are also noted. Critical terminology relating to the Peninsula College Library Mission statement is defined (definitions are from ODLIS-Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science), and the Library mission is compared to that of museums and archives, in light of Ranganathan's Fifth Law of Library Science: "A Library is a growing organism."

Olympic Peninsula Local Research in the Peninsula College Library

The Olympic Peninsula Local Research guide focuses on Clallam and Jefferson Counties and points to Web indexes, public libraries, and local government sources in the region. The guide suggests starting with the development of a search vocabulary which can be used to search catalogs and indexes.

Guide to Fisheries Resources in the Peninsula College Library

The Fisheries Resources guide contains selected titles providing examples of several different publication formats related to fisheries: bibliography, biography, manuals, encyclopedias, writing style guides, databases which index fisheries journals, etc.

Library Publishes Elwha River Dam Selected Bibliography

Be patient as loading the link may take some time.
This bibliography on the Elwha River Dam removal does not pretend to be comprehensive or exhaustive. It includes selected citations to publications about the Elwha River. Scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles, government publications, books, popular magazine articles, unpublished works, theses, and audiovisual materials are included. A few works of history and poetry inspired by the Elwha River are included.

Web sites on the surface Web are mostly excluded, with a few local exceptions, such as the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe Elwha River Restoration Project Web site and the Olympic National Park Elwha River Restoration Web site. Newspaper articles are also not included.

Libraries, Archives, Museums, Ranganathan, and Me

Reading the book, Five Laws of Library Science (1931), by the father of Indian Library Science, S. R. Ranganathan, inspired me to become a librarian. Today, while thinking about the difference between libraries, museums, and archives, I recalled Ranganathan's Fifth Law of Library Science: A Library is a growing organism.

As we know, living organisms ingest, digest, and excrete. So do libraries. Acquisitions is ingestion, while information competency instruction is all about promoting good digestion. To remain responsive to curricular necessities a community college library is also constantly excreting, sanitarily called "deselection" (which used to be called "weeding"). Libraries are growing organisms.

Archives and museums ingest and digest but are less prone to excretion. According to ODLIS, the Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science, archives are about preservation. Archives preserve noncurrent records, usually in a repository like the photo of the Toronto archives above, in this post, for "their permanent historical, informational, evidential, legal, administrative, or monetary value." Museums are about "the preservation and display of collections of physical artifacts and specimens."

Archives and museums are needed and useful cultural institutions, but their emphasis on permanent preservation, as opposed to the Library's instrumental preservation, indicates they are serving an important purpose, but one different from the Library. Archives are not about circulating their collections to the public, to take home to further learning. Museums are not systematically organized to meet the information needs of a specific user population, the way academic libraries are.

The Peninsula College Library mission indicates a purpose more focused on intellectual digestion of information to promote student learning: "To serve the information needs of the students, faculty, staff and community in an environment that nurtures learning and fosters freedom of intellectual activity."

2007-2008 LMC Faculty Handbook Now Available

The 2007-2008 Library Media Center Faculty Handbook includes information on Information Competencies, Resource-Based Learning, Resource-Based Instruction, Electronic Database descriptions, and procedures related to collection development and circulation. An added bonus, absolutely free of charge, is the floor plan of the new Library which should be completed in June 2008.

Education Resources in the Peninsula College Library

The Education Resources guide provides links to external public domain Web sources, such as the National Center for Educational Statistics, but also points to sources not available to PC students on the Web, such as the 3-volume Encyclopedia of American Education available in the Library Reference section.

Botany Resources in Peninsula College Library

The new Botany Resources page includes sample titles related to botany in these formats:

ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND DICTIONARIES
BOTANY MANUALS AND GUIDES
E-JOURNALS

as well as links to these resources:

LIBRARY CATALOGS
PUBLIC LIBRARY RESOURCES
SELECTED WEBSITES
INTERLIBRARY LOAN REQUEST FORMS
CRITICAL EVALUATION OF INFORMATION
WRITING STYLEBOOKS
SOURCE DOCUMENTATION IN THE SCIENCES

NLM Adds "Citing Medicine" to NCBI Bookshelf

In the 21st century, technological advances have created a whole new world of medical citations. To give authors, editors, medical librarians and others a guidebook for navigating that world, the National Library of Medicine is pleased to announce the publication of Citing Medicine: the NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, available free of charge on the NCBI Bookshelf.

Citing Medicine provides guidance for citing 26 types of published and unpublished material, ranging from print books and journal articles to blogs and wikis.
--from the NLM announcement of the 2nd edition, 2007.

Qualities of a Peninsula College Graduate

The Peninsula College Graduate will:

· utilize the processes, knowledge and values of scholarship.

· apply and connect knowledge in order to think critically and creatively.

· demonstrate bilingual proficiency in social and academic contexts.

· exemplify positive personal values.

· demonstrate the moral conscience and social responsibility of a proactive citizen.

· interact with the world recognizing and respecting multiple perspectives.

October 2007

Chemical Dependency Research Guide Now Available

The Chemical Dependency Research Guide provides broader, narrower, and related Library of Congress "Substance Abuse" search terms which can be used in searching the Online Catalog, WorldCat, and Library databases.

The Chemical Dependency Research Guide also lists a sample of 20 books (published between 2002 and 2007) in the Peninsula College Library collection and a selected list of full-text e-journals related to chemical dependency in Library databases.

Philosophy Resources in the Peninsula College Library

Peninsula College Library has an ample collection of materials related to philosophy. The Philosophy Resources guide at http://pc.ctc.edu/biblio/PF/philosophy.htm includes the following:

SELECTED BIOGRAPHIES
ENCYCLOPEDIAS
DICTIONARIES
GREEK PHILOSOPHY BOOKS
PHILOSOPHY E-BOOKS (A sample of aesthetics titles)
PHILOSOPHY E-JOURNALS (A sample of e-journal titles)
LIBRARY CATALOGS
INTERLIBRARY LOAN REQUEST FORMS
ONLINE RESOURCES IN THE PENINSULA COLLEGE LIBRARY
PUBLIC LIBRARY RESOURCES
QUALITY SURFACE WEB INDEXES
CRITICAL EVALUATION OF INFORMATION
SOURCE DOCUMENTATION: MLA, APA, AND CSE

BAS Applied Management Resource Guide Now Available

The first Bachelor of Applied Science in Applied Management students are now entering the new degree program (Fall 2007) and the Library has prepared for their arrival by acquiring print and electronic resources: books, encyclopedias, e-books, business databases, etc. The Library has also prepared a BAS Applied Management Resource Guide to help students get started in their research.

The Bachelor of Applied Science in Applied Management program at Peninsula College will enable students with AAS, AAS-T, AA-Transfer, and AS-Transfer degrees to combine their lower division technical or transfer preparation with upper division credits in business administration, resulting in a practical, application-oriented program. The BAS-Applied Management Program has been developed to meet the employment needs of the Olympic Peninsula.

The Library will do all it can to help students successfully complete their academic work.

Current Subscriptions to Nursing Journals (in Paper Copy) in the Periodicals Room

While the Library has dozens of nursing journals available in electronic format in Library databases such as Academic Search Premier and ProQuest, this list is of the current print subscriptions to nursing journals. These journals are available for browsing in the Library Periodicals Room or for check-out for one week.

Journal Name & Holdings
American Journal of Critical Care 2000-
American Journal of Nursing 5 years+
Critical Care Nurse 5 years+
Journal of Emergency Nursing 1999-
Journal of Nursing Scholarship 2000-
Journal for Specialists in Pediatric Nursing 2002-
Medsurg Nursing 2000-
Nursing Research 2003-
Reflections on Nursing Leadership 2000-

Updated Sept. 26, 2007

Research Guide to Music Resources in the Peninsula College Library

During a visit of Dr. Crabb's music theory class to the library a student requested a Music Research Guide.

The new Music Research Guide is available at: http://pc.ctc.edu/biblio/PF/music.htm

New Peninsula College Library Construction On Schedule

The new Peninsula College Library building is scheduled to be completed in June 2008. Library staff recently toured "inside" with the architect. The view toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca from the Periodical Reading Area should be spectacular!

Emergency Preparedness: An Opportunity for Quality Reading

This week Peninsula College faculty and staff, in coordination with local police and fire officials, have had fruitful discussions about personal responsibility and preparation for events (such as earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.) which might lead to the Olympic Peninsula becoming isolated.

In the event of being stuck with time on our hands -- with no electricity, telephone, internet, or television -- we will have an excellent opportunity for reading by natural light.

In our emergency preparedness discussions we have cited Maslow's hierarchy of needs, from physiological and safety needs up to self-actualization. Besides self-actualization Maslow also spoke of self-transcendence, and its general availability (see Maslow quote below). The canonic and classical spiritual literature can assist us in preparation for self-transcendence.

In addition to food, water, flashlights, medical supplies, etc., I would suggest we carefully choose some literature, from both the Eastern and Western spiritual classics. In our emergency preparedness efforts each of us may select different book titles: those we consider of most importance (actual or potential) for our own spiritual well-being.

Here are a few titles from my list:

EASTERN CLASSICS
The Conference of the Birds / Farid ud-Din Attar (1177)
The Analects / Confucius (c. 400 BCE)
The Dao De Jing / Lao Tzu (c. 400 BCE)
The Lotus Sutra (290)
The Mahabharata (400? BCE)
The Book of Mencius / Mencius (c. 330 BCE)
The Masnavi / Jalaluddin Rumi (c. 1250)
The Upanishads (1600? BCE)
etc.

WESTERN CLASSICS
The Little Flowers / St. Francis of Assisi
Interior Castle / St. Teresa of Avila
Dark Night of the Soul / St. John of the Cross
Imitation of Christ / Thomas a Kempis
The Practice of the Presence of God / Brother Lawrence
Revelations of Divine Love / Julian
The Journal of John Woolman / John Woolman
etc.


MASLOW ON SELF-TRANSCENDENCE
“I have recently found it more and more useful to differentiate between two kinds of self-actualizing people, those who were clearly healthy, but with little or no experiences of transcendence, and those in whom transcendent experiencing was important and even central… It is unfortunate that I can no longer be theoretically neat at this level. I find not only self-actualizing persons who transcend, but also non-healthy people, non-self-actualizers who have important transcendent experiences. It seems to me that I have found some degree of transcendence in many people other than self-actualizing ones as I have defined this term…” --- MASLOW, A. H. (1971). The farther reaches of human nature. New York, Viking Press.

Online Resources (Library Databases) Now Arranged by Broad Subject Categories

The Peninsula College Library databases (also called "deep Web" subscription databases) are now arranged on the Online Resources page by broad subject categories, with the interdisciplinary databases at the top of the list:

ALL DISCIPLINES Peninsula College Library Catalog
ALL DISCIPLINES A-to-Z Index to Electronic Journals
ALL DISCIPLINES Academic Search Premier
ALL DISCIPLINES Ebrary Academic Complete
ALL DISCIPLINES ProQuest
ALL DISCIPLINES Reference Premium Online (Oxford)
BUSINESS ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry
BUSINESS Business & Management E-Book Collection
BUSINESS Small Business Resource Center
EDUCATION eLibrary
EDUCATION Teacher Reference Center
HISTORY History Resource Center: U.S.
HISTORY History Resource Center: World
INFORMATION STUDIES Library, Information Science, & Technology Abstracts
LITERATURE Literary Databases
LITERATURE Literary Index
LITERATURE Magill on Literature
NEWS Alt-Press Watch
NEWS Ethnic News Watch
NEWS New York Times
NEWS Wall Street Journal
SCIENCE Access Science
SCIENCE Environment Complete
SOCIAL SCIENCE CQ Researcher

Dental Hygiene Resources Available through the Peninsula College Library

A pathfinder to the Dental Hygiene collection in the Peninsula College Library is available at http://pc.ctc.edu/biblio/PF/DentalHygiene200710.htm
detailing books, print journal subscriptions, Library deep Web database subscriptions, e-journals, reserve materials, Web-based indexing and abstracting services, and open access full-text archives related to dental hygiene.

1-Minute Tutorial on Finding the 9,000+ E-journals in the Peninsula College Library

Peninsula College Library has over 9,000 full-text E-journals available via the Web for students, staff, and faculty. These titles are searchable by title and by academic subject area in a database called A-to-Z Index to E-Journals.

To view a one-minute tutorial on how to access the E-Journal index (starting from the College home page), click this link: A-to-Z Index to Electronic Journals.

hakia.com is a new semantic search engine

From the hakia.com website:
hakia is focused on delivering core benefits to provide search efficiency, richness of information, and time savings. Here are some of the important "distinguishing" factors of hakia.

GALLERIES:
For short queries such as cancer or Winston Churchill, hakia presents search results in a categorized format to provide meaningful variations of the subject. Each gallery has 10 categories on the average, that is equal to running 10 queries in conventional search engines.

RELEVANCY:
Although the development is in progress, hakia already shows superior capability to handle long-tail (complex) queries via its semantic capabilities. Try what is Palladium useful for? Popularity based search engines may bring results like the London Palladium to this query.

RICHNESS:
Although the development is in progress, hakia is able to bring search results of the equivalent meanings of the search terms. For example, what is the latest bill George Bush killed in the senate will bring results including the word VETO, which is the correct interpretation of the search term "kill". This capability continues to improve in parallel with hakia's progress.

FRESHNESS:
Dynamic pages, like news, often create problems for the popularity based search engines, because there is never enough time to collect statistics. With its semantic capabilities, hakia can analyze and retrieve search results from dynamic pages without a compromise.

HIGHLIGHTING:
For complex and longer queries, hakia highlights relevant phrases or sentences that best correspond to the meaning match of your query. Try Why did Enron collapse? You do not have to open the documents to see the quality of the results - a key to saving your time!

COMPLETE TEXT:
hakia often displays uninterrupted sections of Web pages in search results that provide a full point of view of the content. Presenting complete snippets enables you to evaluate the search results instantly and saves you significant search time.

DIALOGUE:
hakia points out good answers in a dialogue mode in addition to making suggestions, correcting spelling errors, and listing related hakia Galleries. This hakia capability continues to evolve. Try What is the most common type of volcano?

PRIVACY FRIENDLY:
hakia has no interest in who you are and where you live. Neither our technology nor our business model relies on this information. Thus, hakia is not engaged in any practice that may compromise your privacy.

Advice for Students: 10 Steps Toward Better Research

To read the annotations for each step, click on the link below to the original at lifehack.org by author Dustin Wax. Here I just provide the steps.

Advice for Students: 10 Steps Toward Better Research

Schedule!
Start, don’t end, with Wikipedia.
Mine bibliographies.
Have a research question in mind.
Deal with one piece at a time.
Use a system.
Know your resources.
Ask for help.
Carry an idea book.
Bring it up to date.

Remember, though, that until a few years ago, most of us managed to do research with no Internet at all! With typewriters! Walking uphill! In the snow! Barefoot!

Slouching Toward the Mashup

Worth reading. (with apologies to Joan Didion)

Lamb, Brian. (2007, July/August.) Dr. Mashup or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix. EDUCAUSE Review 42(4): 13-24.

According to the article a short mashed-up audio complement to this article can be downloaded (along with most of the track’s sources).

Biblio-Bit: "When choosing a content management system, we might consider how well it supports RSS syndication."

The Library and the Internet: Ten Good Reasons to Use the Library

(adapted by Lake Land College Library from Mark Herring's 10 Reasons Why the Internet Is No Substitute for a Library, which originally appeared in American Libraries, April 2001, p. 76–78.)

So you have to write a paper on the pros and cons of widgits vs. watchamasqueezers. You've always just gone on the web and used Google to find information before. Why should you bother using library resources? Here are ten good reasons why:

1. Not everything is on the Internet.
There is a lot of useful information out there on the web. Unfortunately, this often leads to the misconception that everything you need to know can be found online. This simply isn't true. There are tons of published materials (books, articles, videos, music, etc) that you won't find using a standard search engine like Google or Yahoo. And even when you do find them, your access may be limited (see #2 below.)

2. Not everything on the Internet is free.
Much of the web consists of subscription services that make you pay if you want to get into their website or download their stuff. Before you go and spend your hard-earned money on these services, check out the library's website. We've already paid for many of these services so you don't have to.

3. The Internet is not very organized.
How many times have you searched for something on the web and got a list of 1.5 million web pages? How are you supposed to make sense of that? Does searching the web feel like looking for a needle in a haystack? Well, library resources, unlike the web, are organized by topic and broken down into different types of information (books, articles, databases, etc.) Library resources have been organized by real people, not by search engine robots.

4. There is no quality control on the Internet.
The internet is full of lies, misconceptions, and half-truths. Almost anyone with a computer can put up a website, and they don't have to know what they're talking about. Some sites will deliberately mislead you, in order to get your money, change your opinion on a controversial issue, or just to pull your leg. Hoax sites are all over the place, and they often look real. Did you see the one about the first human male pregnancy? Not real. Library resources, on the other hand, have mostly been through editors and fact-checkers who make sure you're getting (relatively) reliable information.

5. Sources on the Internet can be harder to verify.
When you write a paper, it's important to cite your sources. Some web pages make it difficult to figure out who's telling you what and where they got their information. Library resources, even those on our online databases, will tell you exactly where the information came from.

6. The Internet is too new for some things.
Are you looking for news stories from the day your were born? How about speeches from World War I? The web is relatively new, and most sources of information over 10 - 15 years old have not been digitized or placed on the web. If you're looking for information on older events, you'll have better luck checking out the library's resources.

7. Library online resources are available 24/7.
There's more to the library than books these days. Library online databases can be accessed 24/7 through the library's website. Although you access these databases through the internet, they are not internet sources. They are every bit a part of our library's collection as the books on our shelf. The articles you find in our online databases are reprinted from real live print sources.

8. The Internet is a mile wide and an inch deep.
So you've found 40 websites on widgets, but they all give you the same four or five facts without very much detail. How do you stretch that out to a five-page paper? For a varied and more in-depth analysis of widgets and widgetology, try some of the library's books or article databases.

9. You're already paying for the library.
Your tuition and fees help pay for library resources. Why not get your money's worth?

10. Real live people can help you use our library.
Nice, eager, friendly, highly-trained librarians are standing by, waiting to help you find the information you're looking for. Don't spend hours in vain looking for information on the web. Take advantage of our services to point you in the right direction.

CUFTS Journal Search and Resource Comparison Tools

CUFTS Journal Search allows you to quickly find journal titles in over 245 different electronic collections listed in CUFTS. Search by journal title or ISSN to find out which collections include a journal, and what coverage dates are available.

CUFTS Resource Comparison provides rapid analysis of journal titles and coverage dates in over 245 different electronic collections listed in CUFTS. Pick two resources and find out what the overlap is and what titles are unique to each resource.

New Study on Student Internet Citation Confirms Link Rot

I have just read an interesting article: HOVDE, K. (2007). You Can't Get There from Here: Student Citations in an Ephemeral Electronic Environment. College & Research Libraries. 68, 312-321.

The article is available in print, but is not available on the surface Web, or in our Library databases. As of today, the July 2007 issue of College & Research Libraries has not been indexed by our Library databases. But, as I say, the article is available in print, in the periodical room of the library. Think of all you miss (or have to wait for), if you just rely on Web-based information. Now, to the article.

Hovde did a study of 1,666 student citations to "Internet resources" from 529 freshman English composition papers. For a 1999 sample, seven months after submission of the papers only 38% of the links led to the document cited. For a 2004 sample only 45% of the links accessed the document. Seven years after the 1999 citations were submitted only 9% of the links were successful. Hovde writes: "...the Web is an unstable medium. The sine qua non of a paper's references is stability."

As such the surface Web is subverting the scholarly enterprise which depends upon providing proof of authority, and a "published trail of evidence" which can be verified.

Heaven help us if students start citing fluff from the blogosphere... or MySpace!

The 15 Most Circulated Peninsula College Library Book Titles, 2006-2007

1. Cambridge ancient history. (12 volume set).

2. Capitalism and modern social theory : an analysis of the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber / Anthony Giddens.

3. Democracy and social ethics / Jane Addams ; edited by Anne Firor Scott.

4. Brendan Prairie / Dan O'Brien.

5. Fundamentals of anatomy and physiology / Frederic H. Martini

6. Graphical approach to precalculus / John Hornsby, Margaret L. Lial.

7. Karl Marx, 1818-1968.

8. Marx's concept of man / Erich Fromm

9. Political analysis : technique and practice / Louise G. White.

10. Third wave / by Alvin Toffler.

11. Theory of social and economic organization. Translated by A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons.

12. Sociology of Max Weber. / Julien Freund ; translated from the French by Mary Ilford.

13. Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. With a foreword by R. H. Tawney.

14. On social evolution : selected writings / Herbert Spencer ; edited and with an introd. by J. D. Y. Peel.

15. Karl Marx, his life and teachings (Leben und Lehre) / by Ferdinand Tonnies

MERLOT (for faculty to imbibe)

MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching is a leading edge, user-centered, searchable collection of peer reviewed, higher education, online learning materials created by registered members.
Faculty can browse peer-reviewed online learning materials by discipline and get assignments to use with students. Membership is free. Here is an example of the quality of resources available: DNA from the Beginning

References for College Papers

References for College Papers is Steven Dutch's overview of what is and what is not acceptable to reference in college-level writing in his geology classes at the University of Wisconsin (for example, when "The Internet" is and is not an acceptable source).
How to let your Professors Know you are Familiar with College Writing

• Start early to locate sources.


• Cite scholarly references only.


• Cite recent materials.


• Use accepted referencing styles.

Quantcast: A Site for Business Students

Want to compare impact of two different Web sites? Or find out how much impact your business site has? Now you can get hard data via direct traffic measurement for over 20 million sites... for free!

Quantcast is the world's first open internet ratings service. Advertisers can find reports on the audiences of millions of web sites. Publishers can ensure their sites are represented accurately by tagging them for direct measurement. The service is free to everyone.

Critical Evaluation of Information Sources

Colleen Bell of the University of Oregon Libraries has created a useful Web page for Critical Evaluation of Information Sources. Provides questions to ask to determine authority, objectivity, quality, coverage, currency, and relevance, and provides suggestions for further reading. Links to additional sites on evaluating information sources appear at the bottom of her page.

New Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journals on Information Literacy

Communications in Information Literacy (CIL) is an independent, professional, refereed electronic journal dedicated to advancing knowledge, theory, and research in the area of information literacy. The journal is committed to the principles of information literacy as set forth by the Association of College and Research Libraries. CIL is also committed to the principles of open access for academic research.

The Journal of Information Literacy (JIL) is an international, peer-reviewed, academic journal that aims to investigate Information Literacy (IL) within a wide range of settings and to make generalised observations on how Information Literacy impacts on organisations, systems and the individual.

Research 101 Designated June 2007 ACRL PRIMO Site of the Month

Research 101 is an interactive online tutorial for students wanting an introduction to information research skills. The tutorial covers the basics, including how to select a topic and develop research questions, as well as how to select, search for, find, and evaluate information sources. The Research 101 tutorial, developed at University of Washington by John Holmes et al., was designated the "Site of the Month" (June 2007) by the Association of College and Research Libraries Instruction Section in their Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online Database (PRIMO).

Audio Archives and Podcasts from Lannan Foundation

The Lannan Audio Archives contain audio files from the popular Readings & Conversations series and other public Lannan events from the past 16 years, as well as selections from the award-winning literary radio program “Bookworm” with Michael Silverblatt. Public Lannan events may belong to any of the program areas: Cultural Freedom, Indigenous Communities, Literary, Readings and Conversations, with authors such as Isabel Allende, Sandra Cisneros, Denise Chavez, Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, and hundreds more. Requires free RealPlayer.

Port Angeles, Washington Events, Videos, and More

The Port Angeles page of American Towns is an online tool that citizens, groups and merchants can use to build a better community. The mission of American Towns is to create a useful, shared and "open" webspace for the community, bringing people, places and events together like never before.

One-stop Searching of WorldWideScience Sources

WorldWideScience.org is the prototype for a global science gateway connecting you to national and international scientific databases. WorldWideScience.org accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching (see advanced search) of global science sources. Subsequent versions of WorldWideScience.org will make additional science information resources from many nations accessible via this portal. (from the Web site)

SciTalks: Smart People on Cool Topics

SciTalks: Smart People on Cool Topics provides science, humanites, government and business videos in which academics explain their research.
We’re a society trained to sound-bites. Our critical thinking skills are eroding. Scientific thought is by its very nature complex and challenging to communicate to the general public. ...there is no one else who can better convey the necessity, drama and passion of their work than the scientists themselves. --Lee Vodra, June 9, 2007, Boston, in the welcome post of the SciTalks: Smart People on Cool Topics blog.

Library Has New Edition of CSE

The Library has recently acquired SCIENTIFIC STYLE AND FORMAT: THE CSE MANUAL FOR AUTHORS, EDITORS, AND PUBLISHERS. (7th ed., 2006).

SCIENTIFIC STYLE AND FORMAT provides format for scientific papers, journal articles, books, and other forms of publication. This edition, which was previously published under the subtitle: THE CBE MANUAL (Council of Biology Editors), has been informed by authoritative international bodies with recommendations in keeping with the interdisciplinary approach to science.

Chapter 29 covers formatting of bibliographic references, both in-text (using the citation-name system) and end references. CSE end reference style is based upon the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Recommended Formats for Bibliographic Citation principles. NLM, in turn, bases its format upon standards from the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

SCIENTIFIC STYLE AND FORMAT is located in the Library reference section.

Interactive Plagiarism Tutorial: You Quote It, You Note It!

You Quote It, You Note It! is the first in a series of modules developed by librarians in the Vaughan Memorial Library at Acadia University. Acadia librarians use these modules to teach basic research skills to students..." (Excerpted from the Tutorial Licensing page.)

Want to Take Stuff from the Web... Legally?

Check out OER Commons which provides open educational resources for teaching and learning that are freely available on-line for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student, or self-learner.

Also check out this Web site, Creative Commons. Here is the description from their home page:

Share, reuse, and remix — legally.
Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."
We're a nonprofit organization. Everything we do — including the software we create — is free.

A Wikipedia Detective Story

Wikipedia Brown matches wits with Bugs Meany in The Case of the Captured Koala!

Peninsula College Library Receives NWCCU Commendation

The written report of a recent visit by an accreditation team from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) has arrived. Peninsula College Library received a commendation. Congratulations to all the good-natured library personnel... for continuing to provide services with a smile in these stressful times of reduced working space... while the new library is being built.

Using Social Networking for Academic Purposes

Have you ever been surfing the Web and found sites for your research paper, but when you try to find them later, you can’t quite get back to that same site? If so, you might find it useful to use an academic version of social networking called Connotea. (Of course, you should also use Library deep Web databases as well!)

Connotea is a free online reference management service that allows you save links to all the useful articles, websites, and other online resources you find on the Web. Connotea is specifically designed for scientists and clinicians (it is sponsored by the Nature Publishing Group), but student scholars can use it, too. Because it is an academic social network you get “less noise, more signal,” i.e., better, more relevant recommendations.

There is nothing to download and nothing to learn. All you need to get started is an email address to use for registration. And, because it is Web-based, you will have access to all those sites you come across and later wonder, “Now where did I find that?”

Journalism Pathfinder Now Available

The Journalism Library Research Guide lists resources owned by the Peninsula College Library and is organized into the following categories: Bibliographies, Biographies, Encyclopedias and Dictionaries, Handbooks, Manuals, Career Guides, Mass Media Journals and Newspapers (print subscriptions), Electronic Databases, Library Catalogs, and Source Documentation.

Examples of MLA Style Published by Library

These MLA Citation Style Examples, representing both print and electronic sources, are based upon:
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003.

Note: Peninsula College English Dept. practice italicizes source names.

Library Publishes Preliminary Jacqui Banaszynski Bibliography

This Jacqui Banaszynski bibliography of articles by and about Jacqui Banaszynski is drawn from deep Web library databases and does not include Web sites freely available on the surface Web. Bibliographic databases searched on June 30, 2007 for this preliminary bibliography include: MLA Bibliography, Humanities Abstracts, Psychological Abstracts, WorldCat, ProQuest, Academic Search Premier, Newspaper Source, and InfoTrac OneFile.

Library Acquires Database to Support Environmental Studies

The Library now has the EBSCO database, Environment Complete, which covers all aspects of environmental studies. Environment Complete offers full text of journal articles and monographs, and more than one million indexing records going back to the 1950s, in agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more.