News: January, 2005 - Vol. 9, No. 2
Table of Contents
New trials of electronic resources
The Scrimshaw: available in Reference
One of the most tedious and time-consuming parts of writing a paper, report or article is making sure that the sources are cited correctly. To help solve this problem, the Library—in cooperation with Computing and Information Technology (CITS)—is now offering RefWorks to the entire campus community.
RefWorks is a Web-based bibliography and database manager that allows each user to create his or her own personal database by importing references from text files or online databases. It assists users in creating bibliographic citations in almost any format for papers, journal articles, dissertations, etc.
RefWorks allows you to:
- Create a database of your references
- Import references from the UMass Dartmouth Voyager catalog
- Import references from external databases such as those available on the library's eResouces web page (e.g., CINAHL, ABI Inform, InfoTrac, etc.)
- Organize and manage your references
- Create and format bibliographies and manuscripts and easily make changes to your paper and reformat whenever you want
- Import references from a variety of databases
RefWorks can be used by a group to build a list of citations to resources. For example, a faculty member and several students could all share a RefWorks database and each be able to upload items and/or update the ones already there, add notes, etc. In addition, one user can have many different individual or shared databases.
Try RefWorks today!
Listen while you study or work:
the Naxos Music Library
The library is now offers the Naxos Music Library, which can be accessed through the library’s e-resources page (alphabetically under N or under the subject Humanities). We are able to provide this resource through membership in the Boston Library Consortium.
Naxos is a comprehensive collection of classical music. It includes the complete Naxos, Marco Polo and Dacapo catalogues of over 85,000 tracks, including classical music, jazz, world, folk and Chinese music. While listening, users can read notes on the works being played as well as read biographical information on composers or artists in the extensive Naxos database.
Naxos's sophisticated search engine lets you select works by composer, artist, period, year of composition, instrument or genre. Playlists can also be easily created for educational use, or for hours of continuous enjoyment. Naxos's new releases (currently around 200 CDs per year) are continually added to ensure that the music library is always complete and up-to-date.
New Staff
Mike Campeta joined the library staff as an Instructional Librarian in October. His position includes teaching English 101 library instruction as well as reference duties. He completed a master’s degree in Library Science and also holds degrees in Spanish. Mike speaks fluent Spanish and also speaks Russian and Italian well. His previous experience includes teaching foreign languages in high schools and at the college level.
New trials of electronic resources
The library regularly conducts trials of electronic resources to determine whether they are a good “fit” for our faculty, students, administrators and staff. We appreciate feedback from users about both the content and the ease of use of the e-resources we’re trying out. Please let us know what you think about these databases: do they meet your needs?
Send your thoughts to LibWeb@umassd.edu and they will be forwarded to the Library's Collection Development committee.
Currenly “on trial” are:
Annual Reviews Back Volume Collection, a comprehensive electronic collection of content of all Annual Reviews series dating to the first volume of the Annual Review of Biochemistry.. Annual Reviews is a collection of authoritative, analytic reviews in 30 focused disciplines within the biomedical, physical, and social sciences.
Columbia Gazetteer of the World Online, a database of names, descriptions, and characteristics of over 165,000 places in the world. Users can search all the information, not only place names, and segment it.
Oxford DNB Online (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), an illustrated collection of 50,000 biographies of the men and women who shaped all aspects of Britain's past, from the fourth century BC to the year 2000.
Latino Literature, fiction, poetry and plays representing the Chicano culture and all the different ethnicities of Latin American writers with a Hispanic background working in the United States.
The Scrimshaw: cataloged and available in Reference
What events will capture the heart and mind of this year’s student? What was happening on campus in the 1960s or the 1970s? Cataloger Damaris Chapin-Berner reports that a “time capsule” known as The Scrimshaw, the university’s yearbook, is now cataloged and located in Reference (on the second floor) at LD3234 .M28 U75.
The yearbooks capture the uniqueness of each class year in photographs that document the evolution of the university, student art work, sports, writing and general good times. Browsing through each annual edition of The Scrimshaw, you can explore previous decades of hairstyles, clothing and campus fads, the technical breakthroughs of the 80s and the unique identity that defines each year's group of students.
Staff news
• In October, Dean of Library Services Ann Montgomery Smith visited Peru to present a two-session seminar on the evaluation of electronic resources. She was invited by the ICPNA (Instituto Cultural Peruano Norte Americano) as part of its outreach program to regional librarians.
The seminar was attended by 50 librarians and information scientists, was taught entirely in Spanish, and included individual explorations of both open access and commercial databases and search engines.
This was Smith’s fourth trip to Latin America. In 1992, she received a Library Fellows award (sponsored by the American Library Association) to spend seven months in Peru teaching library management at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica, consulting with innumerable library staff, and as a special consultant to the director of the Biblioteca Nacional. After her return, she converted her lecture notes into a manual for front line librarians without the benefit of a professional education called ¿Por que lo hacemos asi? (Why do we do it this way?)
Smith returned to teach a course in Arequipa, Peru, based on her book and to teach library collection assessment in Chile. Her third trip was as a Rotary International interpreter with a team visiting the Amazon River area to assess the potential for clean water projects.
• Reference librarian Elizabeth Winiarz is participating in the UMass Dartmouth Solar Decathlon project; she coordinates the its grant writing team.
