Library News - History Dept.January 2006Contents:New display in America: History & Life / Historical Abstracts |
For more information, contact: Kendra Van Cleave |
Those of you who use the databases America: History & Life and/or Historical Abstracts, or help students use them, should note that there's a new search interface on both databases. It's much more user-friendly than their previous version, although it may take some time to adjust. Notice your new ability to show/hide options such as search fields, search history, and display options. The Advanced Search is now a bit more intuitive when it comes to looking up Language, Time Period, etc. The one thing I found counter-intuitive is how to see abstracts/more detail about a particular article; use the EXPAND RECORD link in the bottom right to view this information.
FYI, you can set up automatic searches in both databases, whereby your search will be run monthly and results will be emailed to you (you do this by creating a PERSONAL PROFILE). This search can be subject/keyword based, or you can see all of the articles from (a) particular journal(s). If you'd like help setting up this feature, please let me know and I'll be happy to stop by your office.
For those of you helping students locate primary sources, there are a couple of additions to our web-based research guides in history that may be useful. The Primary Sources research guide now includes links to a list of those magazines and newspapers that are included in the Library of American Civilization ultrafiche collection, plus a listing of all of the historical magazines and newspapers in our bound journal collection (these are the pre-1985 titles that we selected to remain on the shelf, the rest of our pre-1985 titles are being stored in preparation for our library building renovation project).
As always, please contact me with requests for library sessions for your classes. Classes can be custom tailored to meet your needs. We have been very successful in making sure all of the HIST 300 classes are receiving library instruction, covering the basics of locating secondary and primary sources. However, other upper division and graduate classes may benefit from workshops focusing on advanced search strategies or particular resources. Please send me an email and we can determine what will work best!
Another as always: please forward to me any materials that you would like me to purchase for the library collection. Although I can't always purchase every item, I try to fulfill most requests. You can send me an email, or just forward print-outs or catalogs via campus mail. Should you wish to purchase items to go on reserve for your classes, it's best to contact the Reserve Book Room directly -- they can obtain your item more quickly than I.
ADDITIONS TO OUR JOURNALS COLLECTION: I know that many of you have been waiting patiently to request new subscriptions for our journals collection. I have good news, which is that we are finally able to submit requests, although we will need a process to create consensus about which journals are most desired. Not all requests will be fulfilled, but we have the chance to make the case for needing new subscriptions. I'll be contacting you shortly with more details about how we can move through this process most efficiently.
This page last updated January 27, 2006.